Wow. How quickly these things come! I won’t do daily advent meditations quite yet…still too much to share from the end of John’s gospel and my readings from 1 and 2 Thessalonians. But ready or not, Christmas is coming, and it’s a wonderful time of year.

In Jesus we have hope. Friday, I wrote that things do not always go well and cited a friend with pancreatic cancer. My friend Kathleen commented that she just lost a friend to pancreatic cancer. But the Apostle Paul was clear that despite death, in Jesus we have HOPE:

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 1.13 – 18, ESV, emphasis mine)