Praise the Lord and alleluia! My prayers were answered- instead of being out on a limb, trying to use my own brain each day to think of things to blog throughout Advent, the marvellous folk behind Love Life Live Lent have launched Love Life Live Advent.
Today, Advent Sunday, has been exciting for lots of reasons. It's the first day of the church year so I get to open my shiny new diary- a whole new year of blank pages and possibilities lie ahead. Another new beginning was my children (and four of their friends) taking their first communion, starting the next part of their relationship with God.
LLLA asks us today to think about the church patriarchs- the first generations to whom God made his promise of an intimate relationship. If Advent is the time we Christians use to feel prepared for God coming to live among us it feels right that we start by thinking about Abraham and Sarah as that's where the wait began. God's promise to Abraham was fulfilled in Jesus' birth and the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, tell the story of a people waiting for that fulfilment.
Our wait through the next few weeks is thankfully shorter and we know when Jesus will come, but one my aims this Advent is to connect with the anticipation of the Hebrew people as they awaited the Messiah.
