Hope in the darkness

It's advent again, and we're into the second week having just had our second Sunday in advent celebration yesterday. Our theme for advent this year is hope, and yesterday we looked at hope in the darkness. We heard the words of Isaiah 9 read and we thought about how light brings hope and the connection with Jesus as the light of the world and therefore the hope of the world.

Whenever I start to preach on a topic like that, I can feel the passion rising. Maybe it's because I'm not at all successful in evangelism and mission, that I feel it so keenly. But as I think about the mandate we have to bring good news to every corner of the earth, to every person who lives in our neighbourhoods, villages, towns and cities, I can't help but feel the pain and disappointment of not seeing folk being added to the kingdom of God. Where are the people who are being added daily to the church? Where are the stories of how we're touching lives and seeing them transformed by the gospel of grace? 

And so I'm forced to my knees to ask God's forgiveness for my shortcomings and to ask for his empowering to get involved with evangelism, to influence my friends, my family, my neighbours, towards a relationship with God. To do whatever it takes to help someone see how much God loves them, how deeply he cares for them and how far he has gone to win for them an eternal future they could never win for themselves.

Perhaps 2008 will be a better year, a more successful year. Whatever the outcome though, I'm still going to commit myself to take every opportunity that comes my way and make myself available for God to use how he wants, when he wants, where he wants and to what ends he wants. To take every opportunity to bring light into darkness so that no one near me needs to stumble around in the gloom.