We begin the season of Advent this year with a cold snap that wakes us up to the realities of life. Our Advent season this year is entitled, Here in the Darkness…Dawn is Now Breaking. Advent has a way of reminding us that life is both deeply beautiful and hard. It is filled with light that not only penetrates the darkness, but redeems and comes out of it. We light candles against the longest nights of the year not because we enjoy the darkness, but because we refuse to let it have the final word.

Each Advent and Lenten season, we often have a theme song that carries us through. This Advent, it is Saviour by We Are Messengers. I invite you to consider the lyrics:

Here in the darkness

I see the light of the world

Here in the chaos

There is peace coming to the Earth

And all this will change

In the most beautiful way

With the virgin mother and a baby's birth

Saviour, oh, Saviour

A child and yet a King, Lord of everything

Oh, Saviour, my Saviour

Emmanuel has come with hope for everyone

What a Saviour

Here in the mystery

Son of God and son of man

Dawn is now breaking through the skies of Bethlehem

Earth meeting heaven as one baby cries

Death started rotting, rotting

And salvation arrived

Lying in a manger is the Lord of hosts

All the power and the honor and the glory is Yours

The one who came to save and to heal and restore

All the power and the honor and the glory is yours

I invite you to enter into this season expectantly, not as an escape from the realities of our cold world, but as a way for God to redeem and transform those realities. Please take advantage of our Advent devotional, Darkness Then Light. Enter into the Advent opportunities available, and highlighted on our Advent bookmark. Invite your family and friends to join us for worship on Sunday mornings and Christmas Eve as we celebrate and experience the birth of our Saviour.

Joyfully,

Pastor Wayne