This week we learned from Guest Pastor Niles Holsinger that the gift of suffering is essential to the Christian faith and our individual walk with the Lord. Great love will always be followed by great suffering, and no one displayed that better for us than Jesus did.

Something sacred transpires in us when we remove ourselves from all that life constantly begs of us and place ourselves into the secret place of silence. In Matthew 3, John the Baptist makes his home in the wilderness and shows us that the way to commune with our King is to remove ourselves from all of life's comforts, treasures, and normalities. He also declares that access and inheritance to the Kingdom at hand comes by way of repentance.

To the believer, the season of Advent means so many things. In the many Christmas messages that will precede Christmas day, one theme should underlie every word and every image depicted of our King. God came to us, in the form of us, to be like us, and to restore all parts of us.