Advent-Waiting Expectantly

Today I want to take a moment to welcome you to this Advent study!  Welcome to our friends in Russia!  France!  Indonesia! South Korea! Australia! Columbia! Czechia, and Kazakhstan! Your sisters from the States are honored to have you join us!  It is the wonder of  this age that women from all around the world can celebrate Advent together!  So let's get started!

The word "Advent" means "the arrival" or "the waiting". From the moment Adam and Eve stepped out of the Garden, "the waiting" began.  They stepped out of perfection and into pain, fear, decay, death, and evil, but God (Don't you just love those two words "BUT GOD" in Scripture?) had a plan of rescue, and it was already in the works! 

Advent helps us to focus, week by week, on a different aspect of the magnificence of God's great rescue story...a story that continues to this moment.  Hope...Peace...Joy...Love.  These four will helps us connect with those who waited before Jesus came and helps us as we walk together toward His coming again to finish it once and for all.  

This week "Hope" will be our emphasis.  For those of you who have the book "Advent, The Weary World Rejoices," you will do the Daily lessons beginning today (Monday, November 18).  There is an ebook available at Lifeway.com for those who would like to join us right away. On Sunday, November 24, if you have an Advent wreath of some kind, you will light the first candle, and consider all you have learned this week.  On page 142 in the book is a short devotional for that particular day. 

Throughout the week, we will be talking about what God is showing us about "hope" as we wait expectantly for His arrival.  You can comment here on the blog or on the Desert Vineyard Women's Ministry Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/DVWomen/ 

I am looking forward to spending these weeks together and am praying the Lord would speak sweetly to you all, wherever you are.

Blessings this week as we hope for what is to come and remember that Jesus was the hope those before His birth anxiously waited for!

With love!

Cherri