There are so many things to distract us in Advent. It’s hard enough to get our minds turned toward Christ in this consumer-mad season, but add to it the extra effort of thinking about Christ coming again.
Add to that all the crazy predictions of when Jesus is coming… and we’re just too tired to think, let alone hope!
But we need this longing in our hearts. Jesus IS coming. Set aside the predictions, quit looking for the Beast or the anti-christ, and look. Look to who Jesus is… and long for that day he will return. Let hope rise up in our hearts.
7 Look, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye will see him, including those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him. This is so. Amen.8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “the one who is and was and is coming, the Almighty.” (Rev. 1:7-8, CEB)
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Apprentice 2 Jesus 
I was preaching this through the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17. The notion of hope and expectation…promise and fulfillment overflows through this genealogical list of “fourteens.”
(Here is my link-back: http://wadholm.blogspot.com/2011/12/fourteen-generations.html)