Remember, “The devil is your enemy and is like a roaring lion on the prowl, looking for someone to devour.” – 1 Peter 5:8

I’m afraid the church (and my own faith for far too many years) has not taken Peter at his word.  Perhaps one of the greatest weaknesses of our current iteration of the Christian faith is that too few of us take seriously the threat of the dark forces at work all around us in our city and the world at large.  We have cultivated an expression of the Christian faith rooted as deeply in love and grace and hope as we know how to, but often at the expense of ignoring the work of resistance necessary for ourselves and others to truly relish in the love of God and the future hope of a world made right.

To put it plainly, we have finally believed that God has loved us and saved us from our sins (and this is what we ought to believe), but have failed, in many quarters, to believe that we, or God, have anything left to do to rid ourselves of the life of sin.  Peter, living in the days after Jesus began the work to defeat the devil’s work says, “The devil, our enemy, is still on the prowl…”

And so our rush headlong into all that is Merry and Bright about the Christmas season causes us to bypass the darkest parts of the library of Scripture – the very parts that inform a deeper understanding of the work Jesus began – the work he has entrusted to us to continue until his return.  

This is why Advent is needed – perhaps more today than in the years past.
Remember, Jesus came to us not at the break of dawn in the morning of the rising sun, but in the cover of darkness – both literal and spiritual.  Into this world of darkness, Jesus came, and to it he will return some day.

So may we, in these days leading up to a celebration of the birth of Jesus and in the days that look forward to his return, come to believe in the needed work of resistance entrusted to you by Jesus himself.

May we work against the powers and forces that are at work against Jesus and the Church.

May we have eyes to see in the dark because we have come to believe in the need for light to show the way home.

And may we be alert, not caught sleeping, the next time the devil comes our way as a lion on the prowl.