Getting Ready for Advent!

Hi Friends,

God’s been hard at work the last few months lining up a lot of experiences that would ultimately be framed into my annual advent series. It’s been a chaotic and hard year in which everything has gone everywhere except to plan. And yet, I’ve also rarely seen the hand or favor of God so abundantly. I’ve come to deeply know, fear, and love who David calls “The Inescapable God” in Psalms 139:

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and night wraps itself around me,”

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

Psalms 139:7 NRSVUE

I’m excited to discuss what God has for us this Advent season. See below for the series teaser and see you December 4th!

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A baby arrives one day whom the prophet Isaiah calls Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. He arrives for an impossible purpose: redeem the irredeemable, rise from the dead. He arrives in a barn that reeks of manure. He arrives for a warring world vying to justify which pile of dead bodies is the sad one. He arrives for mothers who have made their gay children homeless. He arrives for churches who split and denigrate their former members. He arrives to reconcile the dead back to God.

Can he do it, this Son of Man? Can he reconcile a group of people who genuinely believe they have irreconcilable differences with each other? Can this tiny baby bring peace to a world that rebukes peace as cowardice? Can he council the stubborn who are not fine but insist they are? Can he exert might over the power hungry tyrants? Rule forever over a finite space?

I hope so. I’ve bet my life on it.

Irreconcilable Differences: An Advent Series

Out 12/4 only on BryceVanVleet.com

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