Throughout the advent season we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Savior. We prepare our hearts, calling one another and ourselves back to this beautiful, loving, and wonderful God who came to rescue us.
 
Each week we will be looking at a different attribute of Jesus, both to remember and to return to our first love, but also to ask for a greater revelation, that we might know, and trust, and believe that His plans are good, that His love is strong, and that His kingdom will come in fullness one day. We wait for that day and say, "come Lord Jesus." 

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
    there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
    to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
                                                           Isaiah 9:6-7

This week we look to the power of Jesus. 

Possessing all the deity of His Father, Jesus laid down His rights and became man. He cloaked Himself in human frailty, He laid Himself beneath the crushing weight of our sin—so that, after three days, He might strip away the grave clothes, confounding the enemy, and demonstrating once and for all that the Will and Power of God would not be subdued.   
 
This is the great irony of our faith. Willingly dying in weakness, He rose in power to His rightful place on the throne. And in this, He has raised us and stripped away the power of the grave. His power is poured out in mercy on those who call on His name.  

Hallelujah. 
 
On Sunday, we lit the first advent candle, an ancient tradition in the church, whereby we image the fact that the kingdom of God is on the move in our world through the sacrificial love of Christ's bride, the church. We are saying that the glory of God has shone in the world through the gospel of Jesus, and that light is getting brighter through the church's witness, as we await the King of Light to one day return in the full brilliance of His glory. Each week we will light an additional candle, leading up to Christmas when we will celebrate that the King of Kings and the Light of the world has already come, and yet we await His return again.

Meditate on this as you read this poem that Stephanie read on Sunday morning. It was written by one of our members.

The Almighty
 
The might of God
Yahweh-the Maker, Constrainer, and Sustainer of all things
Myriads of galaxies upheld by a breath and His good pleasure
This Mighty God chose to display the weight of His power
Not by crashing into the earth with fire and vengeance
Not in the blazing light of His radiance
 
But in a dark…dank…stable
This God
Able of summoning legions of angels calling down the fire of His blazing Glory
 
Chose to come in meekness, with the angels merely singing
That He might meet us in our poverty

On a dark, unexpected, scandalous, and holy night, God came down
As a lowly baby, born to lowly people,
That through it He might make a holy people

Wrapping flesh around His divinity
That He might offer us, His enemy, an invitation to become His
 
This Son of God, Alpha and Omega,
Lion and Lamb, the Great I Am
The long-awaited hope of Israel was born
That He might die and rise and reign
Victorious and glorious and worthy of praise
Forever, and ever, and ever

 So fall on your knees.  Oh, hear the angel voices.  O night Divine.  Oh night, when Christ was born.  Oh night divine.  When our Christ was born!  

Read week two of Advent, as we adore the Holy One.