Read: Isaiah 9:1-7
Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. (v. 7)
For believers in Jesus, the Christmas season can bring a sense of conflict. Advent and Christmas should be a time of genuine celebration. It honors God for Christians to pause and praise him for the gift of his Son, our Savior. And yet our celebration takes place in a creation that groans under the weight of human sin (Rom. 8:22). This tension raises two temptations. The first is to drown out the sounds of the suffering world with the noise of our own festivities. The second is to align with political leaders or social movements who we hope will force our own quick fixes on the rest of the world.
Advent invites us instead to wait. During this season, we wait as a spiritual discipline. Isaiah 9 gives us a glimpse of God’s antidote to the world’s brokenness. God’s antidote is not an empire that will force creation into submission (v. 4). Nor is it an army that will obliterate all opposition (v. 5). God’s antidote is peace (shalom): all of life made right (v. 7). An end to empires and armies, economic inequality, overconsumption, anPrince of Peaced abuse.
This promise gives us the ability to withstand the two temptations of Advent. We don’t need our festivities to become an immediate, false shalom. True shalom is coming. We don’t need our political leaders to force their own brand of peace. True peace is coming—at the hands of our Prince of Peace. This season, anticipate our Savior’s promised peace.
As you pray, praise the Prince of Peace.
Ben Van Arragon is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. After twenty years of congregational ministry, he now serves his denomination as a pastor wellbeing consultant in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
