Book: 1 Thessalonians

If we are not willing to love when it is difficult, or inconvenient, or when it requires us to show charity to those we do not particularly like (perhaps even to love our enemies!) then we have not love at all, and our relationships will suffer as a result. The evidence is of course abundant in the breakdown of marriage and the family, but the same is true of our relationship with God - we face similar temptations to reduce it down to a feeling or a transaction.

Beloved, as a bearer of God’s image, you belong to God. You are not a cog in the corporate machine, a slave to your work or to the state. Always remember your unparalleled worth as God’s creation, fully realized in your adoption as sons and daughters through faith in Jesus Christ. For the authorities can take everything else away from you, but they can never take away your faith.

The season of Advent prepares us for the Second Coming of Christ. It is a season of anticipation, and of expectant waiting. Yet our waiting in life is not a mere waiting to die. All of us are tempted to live out our days as if we were waiting to die, but our time on earth is much more than that. For Christians, we are not waiting, worrying until the clock runs out, but instead preparing for the dawn of eternal life in Christ Jesus.