Looking back on the interruption of 2020, and the interruption that the season on Advent encourages us to look towards.
What has given you hope this year?
What is giving you hope today?
Comment below, I’d love to hear your experiences.
I should have been in Ireland this weekend for my brother-laws-wedding.
My girls were going to be flower girls and my future sister-in-law was so keen that back at the beginning of 2020 they got the dresses…but all that’s been interrupted how, and chance is my daughters will have grown out of them by Autumn 2021 when the new wedding date is.
2020 has been filled with so many interruptions and delays, and I know some of you have been saying you’re just looking forward to 2020 being over. But before we get to 2021, we journey through Advent and into Christmas.
Advent is a season on watching and waiting…Remembering the waiting of God’s people, who were longing for the Messiah to come and save them, hoping God’s promised one would transform their lives and society.
Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we might be saved. Psalm 80:3
These are hopeful words from Psalm 80, expressing the people’s longing for the shining light Gods face to bring hope and release. Little did they know that years later Gods face really would interrupt the world as a baby in a manger.
I got this Christmas decoration when I was at school. I’d been asked to be a part of a group from school going to put on a Christmas concert in a local town, I think for a charity working with elderly and isolated residents.
I think I was reading a poem and I started well, microphone in hand,
filling the vast hall, and then my nose started to run, big time!
All eyes were on me, and so I didn’t want to wipe my nose, and thought that maybe, if I just ignore it, with the occasional gentle sniff, no-one will know.
I felt embarrassed, and deeply wanted that moment to end as fast as possible!
To this day I don’t know if people did notice, but the one thing this Christmas decoration always reminds me of is no matter how uncomfortable a situation I am in, hope will interrupt it.
The discomfort will come to an end. Restoration will come.
2020 has been a year of the unprecedented.
But nothing compares to the unprecedented truth that Advent leads us towards, that Jesus is coming to interrupt the status quo, and bring us hope.
I pray you day is interrupted…by hope.
Come, thou long expected Jesus,
Words of Charles Wesley (1708-1788)
born to set thy people free,
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Rev Dan Balsdon's Blog 
Some times interruptions show us a new path and we can benefit from them. Thanks Dan. Tell the girls the wedding will stlll happen!
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What gives me hope? When I look back, it I is in times of difficulty or distress that I was particularly aware of God’s presence. I know that many people feel the same. He is always there providing everything we need and He’s there now and always will be.
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