In Christmas God becomes someone we can see.

God coming near to us at Christmas is not a gift that we pack up and put away like a box of ornaments until next Christmas. No this is a gift that goes with us out into our lives. And by grace God brings us into intimate conversations of love with him and one another.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is power to recognize God present in your life; power to discern God has come to where you are right now.

It is God who changes lives. It is God who calls us to bring light into the darkness. As we come together, to pray together, to encourage each other to give birth to what God has called each of us to, our world will be changed. And it may be much bigger than we could have hoped or imagined.

Advent is a season of being puzzled by images we don’t always understand. So far in our Advent Bible readings we have reflected on the time before the birth and ministry of Jesus and on the time of his return, but we have yet to reflect on the preparations for his birth.

In the opening verses of Luke’s Gospel, we find out that he is an investigative historian. He records testimony from eyewitnesses so that his readers can be certain of who Jesus is. Metaphorically, he puts the Jesus puzzle together for us.

Today's gospel is the continuation of last week's, they are two parts of the same story. To understand today's passage, we must return to last week's. John is calling for actions, he does not want excuses. He wants us to bear fruits worthy of repentance.

We can never ultimately solve our problems, satisfy our unfulfilled yearnings, or heal our hurts by human effort. We are unable to restore our own hope by force of will. We need something else, something more, something different entirely. So, we wait for him.

The Christian life is characterized by waiting, but we wait with hope because Jesus redeems us.