Thursday Day 5:

“And so we wait.  O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.  But we wait not in passive resignation or despair.  Expectant and hopeful waiting requires that we pray.  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”  And it requires us to be agents of that kingdom.  In Advent we neither ignore the brokenness in us and around us, nor do we ignore the transformative power of Christ and the flowering and the beauty of a new way of doing business.  We wait in hope, knowing that the Jesus Kingdom will one day bring about a restoration to the way the world was meant to be.  We love deeply.  We advocate justice.  We feed the hungry and clothe the naked.  We love deeply and give sacrificially.  And, as the Psalmist admonishes us to do, we seek peace, and pursue it (Psalm 34:14).  We do all of these things in the power of the First Advent and in the hope of the Second.  O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

Todd Deatherage is co-founder of the Telos Group, a Washington D.C. -based non-profit organization dedicated to educating American leaders about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the pressing importance of working for its peaceful resolution.

http://www.washingtoninst.org/2972/waiting-for-peace-during-advent/