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The Advent Season is the season of dreams. God shared his dream with Abram when he entered into covenant with him and blessed him saying, “I will bless you, so that by you all the nations of the world will be blessed.”

The blessing of the nations, God’s persistent dream, is fulfilled in the Christ Jesus. But God’s dream fulfi lled in Jesus is God’s dream deferred in us. When we lose sight of God’s dream, we invest not in the blessing of the nations, but in the blessing of ourselves.

The Advent Season looks to three events.

The first event is the birth of the baby Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem. The Christmas story tells how the Eternal Word -- the Ineffable, the Unimaginable, Pure Transcendence – becomes flesh in human history. It is easy to imagine perfection in eternity.

But time-bound humanity struggles through one imperfect circumstance to another. The birth of Jesus anchors God’s presence in the midst of our imperfections. In Jesus, God embraces imperfection so that he can embrace us. The blessings of the nations begin with the blessing of each of us.

The second event: the Advent Season looks to the return of the Resurrected Christ on the Last Day. The Book of the Revelation to John relates a dream of the end history when God’s dream for the blessings of the nation comes to final and ultimate fulfillment.

Speaking of the New Jerusalem – a symbol of the perfect city -- John shares with us what the Holy Spirit revealed to him in his dream:

And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

The first event Advent Season looks to is the incarnation of the Eternal Word in Baby Jesus who comes to embrace us in the imperfections of history. The second event is the return of the Resurrected Christ on the Last Day who comes to fulfill God’s Dream once and for all.

But there is a third event. And that is where we come in.

The Advent Season looks forward to the time when, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Eternal Word lives through us. God’s Dream includes the hope of his blessing fl owing through to begin to bring to reality the blessing of the nations.

The manger into which baby Jesus is born is in the stable of our hearts. The New Jerusalem the Resurrected Christ restores is the city in which we live. When we dream God’s Dream, and when we have the faith and courage to begin to live God’s Dream, we bring healing to the nations.

The Christmas story is a children’s story, if God’s dream is not alive in us. The Last Day is a too distant future, if God’s dream is not alive in us.

Advent dreams God’s Dream so that we may truly be God’s people, in the power of the Holy Spirit, fulfilling God’s promise for the blessing of the Nations. When we are faithful, the world experiences God’s Dream and rejoices with the angels. When we are unfaithful, God’s Dream is a dream deferred.