Thought For The Week 30 November 2025

Through Advent, we are focused on a pathway of powerful promises and, eventually, scenes of supernatural happenings in Matthew chapters 1 & 2. Those passages read like fairy tales to many, but in fact convey the mystery of God in the advent of Jesus. In a world of wars and rumours of wars, how about the first reading for the first Sunday in Advent, from Isaiah 2:4: “The LORD will mediate between nations and will settle        international disputes. They will hammer their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore”. When I contemplate that verse, there is hope and relief that, for example, history is in the Lord’s domain and in the end, institutions like the United Nations are not eternal. International peace will be a miracle of God, not the feeble attempts of human counsel.

The last reading on the fourth Sunday in Advent is Matthew 1:18-25. The virgin birth, the angel of the Lord appearing in a dream, the choirs of angels, and that star that pinpoints the place of Jesus’ birth for the Eastern visitors. For me, that passage of Scripture displays the mystery of God. A mystery that is still discoverable in our day, as God moves in mysterious ways through Christ in our midst. I am talking about people discovering a faith relationship with Jesus, coming in from a place way out from a fellowship of believers, miracles, spiritual and physical, in 2025 faith and peace in tragedy and grief. The faith of Mary and Joseph, the surprised awe of the shepherds, and the searching and discovery of the Eastern visitors. The mystery of God cannot be shackled by the likes of Herod’s self-interest and unbelief, or noisy scoffers inside or outside the church.

The liturgical Season of Advent is a time of slow-down to prepare for Christmas, along a path marked by Old and New Testament passages. How will you tell this  story, or will you avoid it or try to remove the mystery? One of the readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent is Isaiah 7:10-16. The Lord asks King Ahaz to ask him to do something as difficult as he can think of, even an impossible thing. Ahaz refuses    because he would not test the Lord like that. So, the Lord chooses the difficult, impossible thing. Verse 14: “All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him   Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’)”.

Brent