Pastor Joel Schmidgall kicks off our 2020 advent series with a proclamation of Hope!

Hope had and has been at the core of Jewish faith for its entirety of existence: hoping for freedom from slavery, hoping for justice, hoping for peace, hoping for a savior. When Christ came, heaven touched earth in a new and profound way. God’s glory was being shown, not by splitting a sea, with a pillar of fire, or by the glowing face of Moses. God’s glory was embodied in the small and breakable form of the human life of Jesus. Jesus is our hope. He is THE hope. 

When the shepherds found Christ, they couldn’t help but proclaim hope to the world around them. The Magi’s natural reaction was to celebrate hope in the presence of Christ. And all who came across Jesus’ path were confronted with a revelation of hope. During this series, we want to light a candle to the profound gift of hope that we find in Christ.