Sunday is the start of Advent: the waiting for the arrival of the Christ child! This Advent our theme this year is The Gifts of Christmas, where we will focus each Sunday on the biblical concepts of Hope, Love, Joy, Peace and Christ. Gifts are found, shared, chosen, embraced and experienced: that is what we will do with these Gifts, starting with hope.

Find the Gift of HOPE! Advent and the birth of Jesus happens at the darkest time of the year, helping to create a backdrop of spiritual darkness that needs to be lifted. This Sunday we will reflect on the circumstances in which Jesus was born: it was a dark time. The people of Israel were searching for a sign that would give them hope. In the Advent of Jesus that hope was announced, first to Mary, then to the shepherds. They found the gift of hope in Jesus.

People today are searching for a sign of hope as well. They may not be looking to scripture or even something religious, but they are nonetheless searching for hope. You may be one of those people. The Advent season affords us the opportunity to look deeply into the significance of the birth of Jesus. Advent invites us all to find not only hope in Jesus, but to also understand that Jesus came to fulfill the aspirations of our hopes. Jesus came, not to be served like other rulers, but to serve others. He came not to condemn us for our sins but to save us from our sins. Jesus came not to just make life more tolerable, but to give us a new life with eternal dimensions. That is the kind of hope we are considering this Sunday as we explore The Gifts of Christmas! Join us this Sunday as we Find the Gift of HOPE!

How did our denomination get the name Baptist? As you might guess it has a lot to do with the practice of baptism. The Massachusetts Puritans came to the New World in search of religious freedom. They were able to practice the kind of religion they wanted, but interestingly they restricted other religions and expressions of Christianity. In 1638, when a young minister named Roger Williams became convicted that biblical baptism was to be by full immersion, he was directed by the Puritan Church leaders to practice that form of baptism outside of their jurisdiction in what we now know as Providence Rhode Island. I believe this to be the beginning of the freedom of religion in America and what has been such a crucial part in the formation of America.
Baptism is a lot more than just getting wet. Baptism is the entrance into the church and comes with deep spiritual as well as theological importance. In Romans 6 St. Paul does a masterful job of connecting spiritual baptism with water baptism and the significance they have in the believer’s life. If you’ve been to a baptism, it’s not hard to see how Baptism by immersion is a very visual demonstration of the Death, Burrial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Baptism is also a very public testimony of the transforming Gospel in an individuals life. Join me this Sunday as we that a deep dive (pardon the pun) in to the doctrine and practice of Baptism.

In this postmodern, post-Christian, western, English speaking world we live in, we use the word “love” way too casually. We use it to describe how we feel about the pizza we are eating and in the same breath will tell our spouse – I love you. I hope we are not putting the love of pizza on the same level as the love of our spouses. How we use the word love requires an understanding of the context within which it is used because we tend to infer much of the meaning.

When the word love is used in the Hebrew or Greek languages the Bible was originally written in, love was not used casually. Love was used to express a choice of commitment and devotion to the object of that love. So, in Psalm 119:97 when the Psalmist proclaims “Oh how I love your law!”, he was not comparing scripture to pizza. The Psalmist was declaring his deep commitment to and admiration for the Word of God. The Psalms are the Jewish hymnbook of the Old Testament, and like many songs written today, they express strong emotion such as love. Most of you reading this blog are not song writers and I would guess you don’t often express strong feelings of love like they do in a song. And yet we are called to follow the teaching and pattern that we see in Scripture which begs the question, “How do you fall in love with the Bible?”. Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, provides the answer for us. Sunday we will look at part of Psalm 119, then in your community groups you will tackle another part of the Psalm, helping us map out a path to falling in love with the Bible. And yes, I’ll say it – Ya Gotta Love this Book! You have to love the Bible if you are ever going to grow from it. Join me this Sunday as we take a bold step toward loving this book more deeply.