Practically salivating. Get here, Advent. 
Thanks as always, @byronborger, for the TLC you and your team put into the physical packaging of this order. Thankful for Hearts & Minds!
Couldn’t wait another day. Diving in on the eve of Advent 1.
“The disappointment, brokenness, suffering, and pain that characterize life in this present world is held in dynamic tension with the promise of future glory that is yet to come. In that Advent tension, the church lives its life.” @flemingrut
“It might be said of Advent that it is not for the faint of heart. To grasp the depth of the human predicament, one has to be willing to enter into the very worst.” @flemingrut
“The church is not called to be a ‘change agent’ – God is the agent of change... The calling of the church is to place itself where God is already at work.” @flemingrut
“The Incarnation is like a dagger thrust into the weft of human history.” – Edwyn Hoskyns
“The great theme of Advent is hope, but it is not tolerable to speak of hope unless we are willing to look squarely at the overwhelming presence of evil in our world.” @flemingrut
“Patience does not mean passivity. Believing that God will come does not imply inaction.” @flemingrut
“This is the height and depth, the ultimate and eternal power and glory of the almighty Lord; he has mercy on us.” @flemingrut
“The truth about God is written in the lives and in the deaths of those who have made a sacrificial commitment to God’s justice and righteousness.” @flemingrut
“This is what the church ‘whispers in darkness’: Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.’” @flemingrut
“Never underestimate the power of a God who could have turned his back on us in wrath forever, but instead became Love incarnate...” @flemingrut
“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when feeling it not. I believe in God even when God is silent.” – inscription on a basement wall by someone hiding from the Nazi Gestapo during WWII
“When you hear those two words, ‘but God,’ in the New Testament, tune in, because you are about to hear the good news.” @flemingrut
“Sentiment, nostalgia, optimism: these are weak, thin fuels. We need premium oil for our lamps if we are to keep the light of the church burning in the time of trial.” @flemingrut
“Your calling is to discern the place of resistance that the Lord has set before you. You will recognize it by the temptation to avoid it.” @flemingrut
“Evil does not always wear a mask of barbarity; sometimes it smiles. Sometimes it has beautiful manners. Sometimes it looks like your neighbor. Sometimes it looks like the face in the mirror.” @flemingrut
“The line between good and evil runs through each person. The tragedy, the true tragedy, is not to see it in oneself.” @flemingrut
“Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement; he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.” – C.S. Lewis
“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.” – Annie Dillard
“God did not come to improve the improvable, but to raise the dead.” @flemingrut, paraphrasing Robert Farrar Capon
“Advent is an exercise in delayed gratification.” @flemingrut
“Advent begins in the dark.” @flemingrut
“There are two kinds of evildoing: the kind that is done directly and the kind that is done because ‘good’ people do not protest. The devil loves nothing more than good people not protesting.” @flemingrut
“Against the relentlessly upbeat forms of popular Christianity in America, we affirm the pain of living in the sphere of Sin and Death, and we acknowledge that we live only and always in hope.” @flemingrut
“The Christian church calls this the incarnation: the descent of God from the eternal realm of uncreated light into the violence, darkness, sickness, and death of this world.” @flemingrut
“Advent is a time for making a fearless inventory of the darkness.” @flemingrut
“‘Is the good Lord deaf?’ That is an Advent question, perhaps /the/ Advent question.” @flemingrut
“To be a Christian is to live every day of our lives in solidarity with those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, but to live in the unshakable hope of those who expect the dawn.” @flemingrut
“When the church groans with Isaiah, ‘Thou hast hid thy face far from us,’ it speaks as a corporate body with a common lot. If one suffers, all suffer.” @flemingrut
“Every religion which does not affirm that God is hidden, is not true.” – Pascal
“This is one of the most arresting features of biblical faith. Even when God appears to be absent, the community goes on addressing him, protesting to him.” @flemingrut
“The Lord has come – he will come. The life of the Christian church is located and lived at the intersection of those two advents.” @flemingrut
“This is the special atmosphere of Advent, a sense that something portentous is approaching us. We are not approaching it. This is not our journey to God but God’s journey to us.” @flemingrut
“Nostalgia and sentiment play no part in the season. There were no golden days of yore. Advent refuses to dwell in a past that never was. Advent is about the future.” @flemingrut
“The mercy of God does not depend on human virtue for its fulfillment.” @flemingrut
“God has acted. God has intervened. God is the one who rules over the everlasting kingdom that he delivers to his Son.” @flemingrut
“The little strings of lights in the dark places remain lit, by his grace, in the dark places until he comes again.” @flemingrut
