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“There is a cure for everything. Except longing.”
- Ahmet Altan, “Voyage Around My Cell,” The Paris Review, October 10, 2019
“The events that bring [God’s] presence arrive on the horizon of his absence.”
- Andrew Root, The Pastor in a Secular Age
“Hope begins in the dark…”
-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
NOTE: This is an edited transcript of a sermon I preached at Awakening Church on December 1st, 2019, to begin the Advent season. To listen to the audio or watch the sermon, please click here.
My son was born on October 24th of this year. It is a strange sentence to write, a more bizarre experience to inhabit each day. The week he was born, the Lord flooded my mind with Scriptures. After watching my wife go through the difficulty of childbirth, and now heading back into my ministry work during the season of Advent, Romans 8 was brought to my mind, where Paul compares the agony of waiting for God to the agony of childbirth.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the…
