Three things struck me in today’s readings.

• The multitude of world changing, life altering events
• The references to being “a voice in the wilderness”
• God’s call to tend to God’s people

But this was about Jesus’ coming, right? What does it mean for me? He already came, I am just waiting for His return. Do these apply to the world I currently live in?

Reflecting on that, I am also struck by three things.

• The multitude of world changing, life altering events
• The need for God’s people to be a voice (a light) in the dark wilderness we are walking through
• The need to tend and care for God’s people.

But who are God’s people? I have realized of late that we don’t always see each other as people, but people with a label “the fat one”, “the rich one”, the “uneducated one”, “the black one,” “the immigrant”, etc.

Are we not all God’s people, without labels? I imagine God looking at our current world, much as He may have in the first Advent, shaking his head and asking, “Do you hear what I hear? Do you see what I see?”

So what do we do while we wait for Jesus to come again? Peter sums it up by reminding us we are called to care for each other; to be kind, to love, to see each other through the filters of God’s love. Make straight the path of our heart so that when Jesus returns we can answer “Yes” when asked “Do you hear what I her Do you see what I see?”

Cynthia Lovejoy