2nd Sunday of Advent (B) 10 December 2023 Sermon

2^nd Sunday of Advent 10 December 2023 Character

When we are in trouble, among other things, we pray to God.

We know He can help us in every need, and has helped us a million times before.

He can help us in two ways – He can remove the trouble, or He can leave the trouble in place, and give us the necessary strength to deal with it.

Either way we come out happy. While we are enduring the trouble, however, it can seem like there is no help coming.

Many lose faith in God when the troubles seem too many and too hard to bear.

We might face the same temptation. Can we guarantee that we will not abandon our faith, even under great pressure?

God will rescue us, or strengthen us, or a bit of both. If we recognize this pattern in His ways of dealing with us we will feel a lot more secure.

As to rescuing us, we have guardian angels, who are known to have intervened supernaturally in saving lives and injuries. Many of these occasions we would not know because we do not see them, yet they do arise.

As to giving us the strength to deal with troubles, this also is a largely invisible thing, yet it is what God wants to do for us. He builds up our characters so that we become stronger people.

This way we become more able to cope with difficulties and overcome them – because we have more grace operating in us than before.

This can explain why God lets us suffer, always a sore point with the human race!

Even the good suffer, the best people (saints) most of all. This seems the wrong way round from one point of view. The good people should get it easy and the bad people hard (so human wisdom would have it). Eventually it will be that way, but God is acting to make the good people better, and grow to their full potential.

Consider your own life to this point. Can you recall a time when you felt God was letting you down? Can you see how you have benefited from going through such a time and you are still believing?

We learn and we become stronger through meeting adversity and overcoming it. We are stronger to deal with life, able to answer new challenges.

In the Advent season we hear of John the Baptist. He lived a hard penitential life, seeking in all things to do the will of God.

It is good to be comfortable, but better still to be pushing ourselves harder in seeking self-discipline, aided by God's grace.

God wants to make us stronger, and we find that we want it too.

It is much easier to live a happy life if we are strong. We can endure the pain more easily and do more good at the same time.

John denied himself much of what other people sought. And look at all he achieved. If he had been like everyone else, none of that would have happened.

Over a lifetime, it is what we have become that counts. What sort of a person am I, which way have I been heading?

God does not want us to see Him as just a fixer of problems, someone we call in an emergency, but only in emergencies (like a plumber or electrician).

His objective is that we come to know Him as He is, and not just what he can do for us.

Further, His objective is to make us good people, in His image; not just doing good but being good. Be you perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5,48).