In times of crisis like this, the world is waiting. Every eye is watching. Each day this year we’ve hoped for the newsreader to announce: “a vaccine has been developed!” Now we hope it will be quickly effective. We all want to know when the story will get better; when we can all (literally) breathe a collective sigh of relief. The world is waiting. And actually long before this crisis the world has been waiting.
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. — Romans 8: 19 (NIVUK)
This is a time for the church – God’s children – to be revealed! There’s this wonderful link between our sonship and daughtership being made known to the world, and Jesus Himself becoming obvious and real in people’s experiences. This time, through our prayer, words and actions, Jesus gets to be revealed – and God’s intention for His people too.
During Advent 2019, shortly before Christmas, we gave our worship teams at St Mary’s Church the Sunday off in preparation for the busy run of Christmas services. I was leading one of these services and had to find some worship songs online to use in place of having a band, and I found this moment of live worship at Bethel Church:
Jesus, the joyful announcement. Jesus the hope for mankind. These two lines captured my imagination so much in the run up to Christmas. I prayed and encouraged the church with me to pray for the revelation of Jesus to those in the area around our church building. He is the joyful announcement! In this time of waiting for good news, we are also waiting for the headlines to tell stories of JESUS in people’s lives! Stories of how the church brought creative solutions, how healings happened, how people found comfort and hope.
And indeed, like the arrival of Jesus to a grubby cattle shed on the outskirts of a village in occupied Israel 2,000 years ago, many of the announcements about Jesus in this time will go unreported. And yet they will not be entirely unnoticed, because there’ll be angels appearing, and wise men searching, and ordinary folk recognising Him because He comes in a way they can know Him – through answered prayers and the acts of kindness and encouragement of God’s people.
Adventures with God 