Advent Devotional - December 21, 2016

“O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer / Our spirits by Thine advent here / Disperse the gloomy clouds of night / And death’s dark shadows put to flight.”

-O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

While death has been a part of our world since Genesis 3, it was not so in God’s original plan for the world. The discomfort we feel around death is a constant reminder that it is an intruder in God’s good creation. We may avoid thinking about it and dealing with it for years, but as our bodies age and we see loved ones lost, the shadow of death can become long indeed.

In the face of death’s shadow, Jesus’ coming is like the rising of the sun, the “Day-Spring” as the King James Version puts it in Luke 1:78. When Jesus came, He made a way for His people to overcome the ultimate consequence of sin, which is death. His resurrection is the ultimate hope for the Christian life. We know that because of the resurrection that death no longer has power over the believer. In John 11:25 Jesus says that He is the Resurrection and the Life. That was true for Lazarus back in the time of Jesus, and for anyone who submits to His Lordship, it will be true forever.

Christians in this Advent season should remember that our hope is twofold. First, in Jesus’ first coming, the sun rose on death’s reign, and its shadow began to flee. But secondly, an even greater hope remains that He will come once more. And that second coming will be like the noonday, fully flooding the shadows of death with marvelous light, as our Day-Spring sits in triumph. He will dwell with us, and death will be no more (Revelation 21:3- 4). Not only do we rejoice in Christ’s first coming, but we also hope in His second coming when He will restore all things and eliminate death forever.