Book: 42

Sadly, we far too often take the bait. We far too often go about buying gifts as if they’re the key ingredient to a merry Christmas. So we consume and consume without being satisfied. You see, it’s not simply the music that’s like chum to us but the wrapping paper and packages too. All of it sends us into a feeding frenzy while only making us hungrier and hungrier. But chum doesn’t satisfy!

Friends, as I hope we’ll learn in our first Advent passage, this is not new. People have always turned to the things in this world in order to find satisfaction—in order to satisfy their deepest hungers. So, even 700 years before Jesus’s birth, God through Isaiah calls people away from all that cannot satisfy to the only one, in all of history, who can. Let’s read about this gospel of Christmas past together. You can find the passage on page 675 of the brown Bibles in your row.