Silent Night

SILENT NIGHT: Hope in the dark

Series Overview

WHEN GOD SEEMS DISTANT AND THE WAITING SEEMS LONG

AN ADVENT SERIES IN ISAIAH

Advent…. A Season of Waiting (and waiting, and waiting). I can hear a child in the backseat asking: Are we there yet?

Centuries ago the people of God were waiting. Waiting for God to save them. To do something.

This voice of longing and hope echoes throughout the Old Testament in anticipation of the arrival of Christ. And we find many of these echoes of Jesus in the Book of Isaiah.

They had been told God would bless the world through them (Gen. 12:3), but now they are in darkness: A spiritual, cultural, and social darkness.

Where was God?

And yet– in all the turmoil, some of which they had brought on themselves, God continued to give them promises. A beacon of what’s to come. He desired to come and be with His people. To save them. While God was silent and felt distant – His love was still at work.

In the face of darkness, God promises Himself. And He sent His Son.

No matter how distant God may feel sometimes, no matter how many questions may feel unanswered– in our deepest moments of wilderness and waiting – we can know that even if the night is silent right now, it won’t be silent forever. That is our hope.

And that is the hope of Christmas.

This season we’ll allow these messianic prophetic texts from Isaiah resonate with our own senses of waiting and wondering in our journeys with God.