Happy New Year

INTRODUCTION
NASA’s Apollo 13 had one mission: land on the moon. On April 13, 1971, the spacecraft carrying three astronauts was half way to the moon when an oxygen tank exploded. Now tumbling through space while leaking breathable air, losing power, and drifting off course, Commander Jim Lovell radioed to mission control: “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” and their mission immediately changed. It was now a rescue mission, and the goal was to get back to Earth alive. After they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean four days later, their mission was dubbed “the successful failure” because they lost their original goal of landing on the moon but made it back to Earth alive. Our story begins with a simple mission: “The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it” (Gen. 2:15). But soon there was the big lie, rebellion, and so Eden, we’ve had a problem. Now God had a new mission: save us from our sin and its catastrophic effects. It is a succesful failure because we lost our original creation goal, but God has succeeded in saving us through Jesus Christ. x IRDUCI The meaning of the word mission is “a sending; a charge to go and perform a specific duty.” This leads us to the mission statement of Scripture, John 3:16–17: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” This time of year we go straight to Christmas, the first part of the mission. But what about Advent, which is the last part of the mission? The first stage is Jesus’ arrival in the manger. The final stage is his arrival in the clouds. Maybe we lose sight of the real meaning of Advent because, for many of us, Advent is the launching pad to Christmas morning: a twenty-four-day countdown to stockings and presents. We don’t think about Advent as first being about the second coming. After all, it’s been two millennia since Christ was born, crucified, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit. And for two thousand years, we’ve been living somewhere between forgetting about or fretting over his return. In his book Give Them Christ, Stephen Seamands writes, “the second coming should therefore not cause us to abandon this world or look for an escape from its suffering and evil. Instead, it should move us to become passionately and actively engaged in it.”
Preparing for that kind of Advent before we celebrate Christmas is how we get in on God’s rescue mission. Consider these devotionals a launch manual for our mission together. To get started, maybe we need to add a line to the mystery of our faith, which is really our mission hope: Christ was born. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again! Let the countdown begin . . .

1 1. Stephen Seamands, Give Them Christ: Preaching His Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension and Return (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2012), 176.

HAPPY NEW YEAR
ROMANS 13:11–14 | This is all the more urgent, for you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here. So remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes, and put on the shining armor of right living.

Because we belong to the day, we must live decent lives for all to see. Don’t participate in the darkness of wild parties and drunkenness, or in sexual promiscuity and immoral living, or in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And don’t let yourself think about ways to indulge your evil desires.

Consider This
Do you remember New Year’s 2000? I sort of do. I’m not one for New Year’s Eve parties. In fact, I would rather go to bed before midnight and wake up in a new year. But this was the arrival of a new millennium! The entire earth was celebrating this historic moment in space and time across the globe, and I was all alone. All of my plans had fallen through, so I sat by myself at home watching the news show fireworks and celebrations as the clock struck midnight across each time zone, from the Great Pyramids at Giza to the Statue of Liberty.
When the new millennium arrived for me in Dallas, I drank champagne alone. Instead of celebration, it was isolation. More than a new year, it was a new era, and I was starting out disoriented. Like many of us, I look to New Year’s as a time to start over, because “this year is going to be better.” But when we try to do it all in one day—in the midst of a frantic holiday season—we wake up still lost and disoriented, having given up on our resolutions by the end of the week. Instead of a single day, we need a season. We need Advent. We need Advent because it takes time for reorientation: to prepare, to repent, and to wake up to all that Christmas morning aspires to be. Advent is not a season to get lost in earthly celebration, but to be found in what God has done, is doing, and will do through Jesus Christ in a disoriented world. Advent is New Year’s for the church: the first season in the Christian calendar. Advent means “the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.” For Christians, it marks the celebration of the arrival of Jesus Christ, but not in the ways we often think of in the midst of mistletoe and holly. In the Christian calendar, the end is the beginning. Before we celebrate Jesus’ silent-night first arrival in the manger, we prepare for his trumpet-blasting second coming in the clouds. He will come back and bring history to a close, and we don’t need to be afraid. Because as we’ll see this season, his return is a good thing. The earth has completed another trek around the sun, finishing its four seasons and preparing to make another H ADV MII 5 orbit. Where will we find ourselves this year? Advent is an alternate to New Year’s as an opportunity to let the church’s seasons, not the world’s, set the orbit for our lives.
CHRIST WAS BORN. CHRIST HAS DIED. CHRIST IS RISEN. CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN!