Adv1A22.    Isaiah 2:1-5.   For Isaiah the God of the universe made his home in this universe in Jerusalem.  “All nations shall stream toward it.”  “He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples.”  Under the leadership of the God of all peoples he will turn the instruments of war that take life away into instruments of agriculture that give life.  “Let us walk in the light of the Lord” and no longer in the darkness of destruction.

Matthew 24:37-44.  Most people live as if life is just an ordinary everyday flow of activities that only deal with ‘the here and now’, “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.”  Jesus requires us to live our ‘now’ as a preparation for the ‘then’, when we will be swept away into the endless forever world.  “So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”  Live each day as though we are already in an endless forever, because as a matter of fact, we are already in ‘the endless forever’.

Psalm 122: “Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.”

Romans 13:11-14.    Paul uses the earthly imagery of being asleep in the darkness of the night to portray a spiritual state of being caught up in “the desires of the flesh.”  He contrasts it to the spiritual state of living awake in the daylight of conducting ourselves properly in Christ.  Life ought to be Christ and not this world and our body.