There’s a saying going back to ancient times: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” In other words, be so strong so as to make it foolhardy for anyone to attack you and risk destruction. You might call it the deterrence argument.

Happy new year—the new church year, that is! We’re beginning a new cycle of readings, leaving behind the storytelling of the Gospel of Luke and attending to the teaching accounts of Matthew. We are reinventing ourselves as an Advent people again: the people who wait for a “blessed arrival from ahead of us,” as theologian Jürgen Moltmann says. Now’s the chance to shake off the dust of a dry old year, with all of its missed opportunities, failures, disappointments, and losses.

The Arrival of the Son of Man will take place in times like Noah’s. Before the great flood everyone was carrying on as usual, having a good time right up to the day Noah boarded the ark. They knew nothing—until the flood hit and swept everything away.

JAMES EARL JONES has one of the most distinctive voices in Hollywood (think Darth Vader in Star Wars, Mufasa in The Lion King, and “This is CNN”). Yet you might be surprised to learn that as a child he stuttered terribly and dreaded public speaking. His career as an actor may have never gotten off the ground if it hadn’t been for his high-school English teacher and mentor, the poet Donald Crouch. 

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

Are the readings telling us, “Don’t get caught”: that those absorbed in self-indulgent behavior won’t notice they’re in trouble until it’s too late? Scripture this week is indeed recommending staying alert, but not simply out of fear. No, God is trying to get our attention. Learn my ways.

It may seem strange to talk about Christ’s second coming when we’re just starting to prepare for the celebration of his first. But that’s exactly what the scripture readings for the first two Sundays of Advent do.

The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. —Tullian Tchividjian, One Way Love