A few years ago I found myself absolutely dreading the coming Christmas season. The holidays are not my favorite time of the year for a variety of reasons (I know I’m not the only one). I don’t remember how I came to find this Advent devotion, but it saved me from having the Christmas blues – it helped bring me back to the “why”. It centered me. Even though I’ve read through it already, I’ve made The Dawning of Indestructible Joy my annual Advent read to help prepare me for Christmas.
Mrs. Heather Souders, Director of Community Life
The Search-and-Save Mission
“The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost”. Luke 19:10
The word advent means “coming.” In this season of the year, we focus on the meaning of the coming of the Son of God into the world. And the spirit of our celebration should be the spirit in which he came. And the spirit of that coming is summed up in Luke 19:10: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” The coming of Jesus was a search-and-save mission. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” So Advent is a season for thinking about the mission of God to seek and to save lost people from the wrath to come. God raised him from the dead, “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). It’s a season for cherishing and worshiping this characteristic of God—that he is a searching and saving God, that he is a God on a mission, that he is not aloof or passive or indecisive. He is never in the maintenance mode, coasting or drifting. He is sending, pursuing, searching, saving. That’s the meaning of Advent.
An excerpt from The Dawning of Indestructible Joy by John Piper
