N.B. This is an old exhortation. It is not really Advent yet. Nor is it 2002. But I stand by everything else.
This is the second Sunday of the Advent season. As Christians, we seek to live our lives before God moment by moment and day by day. Unfortunately, we tend to taper off after this, letting the secularists and compromised covenant members define the months, years, decades and centuries. But we live in an annual cycle because this is how God created the world and us along with the world. If we do not explicitly honor Jesus Christ in the months, years, decades and centuries, then that vacuum will be filled with idols, seeking to define our time, which is exactly what has happened.
Why are we surrounded by civil holidays like Labor Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Martin Luther King Day, and so on? Why do we measure our lives by them? Is it because we think independence from Britain is more important than the Incarnation? On paper, no. Practically, yes.
The secularists currently understand this far better than we do, oftentimes going to court over what we think are trifles. But they are not trifles; they are examples of their awareness of the totality of the conflict we are in. This is what lies behind the current push to use B.C.E – Before the Common Era—and C.E.—Common Era—in the dating of years.
But we are servants of the king, our Lord Jesus Christ, who changed history forever. We are His servants, and are now at the beginning of a new church year, approaching the festival of the Incarnation, in the year of our Lord, 2002. If you haven’t sent out your Christmas cards yet, make sure you mark them anno Domini. This is a profound testimony of the cultural potency of an uncompromised faith.
Common era, bah! Common era, humbug!