“People will be terrified at what they see coming upon the earth ...
When all these things begin to happen,
stand and look up, for your salvation is near! ”
(Luke 21:26; 28)
This year during Advent, at a time when the world has been devastated by the pandemic, many millions, billions of Christians around the world will read and hear Luke’s Word on the coming of the Son of Man. They will read Luke’s reference to standing up, raising the heads up. About that special behavior, which is in stark contrast to discouragement, to the anxiety that burdens the people of the whole earth today, to the guess of evil. He who waits for the coming of the Son of Man, now realized in his Spirit, is not a man with a hanging nose, perhaps full of pessimism, or cynicism. But not a man of the empty-headed arrogance, of self-idolizing, and does not characterize him with indifference and arrogance over the lives of others.
He who lives in the happy promise and hope of the return of the Son of Man straightens and raises his head to search the heavens and the earth, the near and far horizons, so that when the last sign of Advent appears in the sky, the living, glowing Morning star, a sign of the arrival of the Lord judging the living and the dead, he will see it all and happily acknowledge it. What a difference between the contents of the same phenomenon, while the form can be deceptively the same. How different can one man’s straightening and raising of his head be from another! How deceptively the same human posture can cover something else. Care must be taken not to be deceived! We should practice this Advent form, a form of movement, written and said to the tune of the beautiful Swiss-Italian F. Bernouilli and to the English poem by Jordan Samson: the King is coming! In addition to reading the Bible and prayer, some interesting Advent maps will help you capture this beautiful inner expectation, recording this form of Advent. Let's look at these together.
Strange “Map of Jesus” - be on it too
I'm copying a special map of Jesus here. No, not to indicate where our Savior comes from, and where we should go then. This map is very childish. But it's very interesting! It is a strange internet application that shows how many people in the world have read the Christmas story since December 1. Christmas Story Tracker is actually a fun live map created so that when someone reads a Christmas story with this Bible app, in the map a star lights up for the country in which the story is read. The counter in the upper right corner shows the total readings of the YouVersion community since December 1 in the running counter. To do this, we need to visit christmas.youversion.com. This specialty is only one of a wide variety of Jesus maps, as well as Advent or Christmas running counters. According to the latest world statistics, 7.8 billion people live on our planet, of which 2 billion are 174 million Christians (of which about 50% are Roman Catholic, 37% Protestant, 12% Orthodox, 1% other Christian). According to our small counter, to date, 3 million 389 thousand 674 people in different parts of the world have read the Christmas story. And it's just a data measurement interface! At least half of the nearly 2.2 billion Christians will read and hear the good news in all parts of the world in a variety of ways: on radio, TV, the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, pulpit, millions of family Bible reading communities, or just in person, alone.
I look through the eyes of amazed children and shepherds, and I look forward to His coming
Through the eyes of the astonished shepherds we can see, especially where the gospel of birth became a daily theme, which, according to the quote, is not accidentally the passage that says, “And the angel said to them, it shall be a joy unto all the people: for unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ Jesus the Lord in the city of David ”(Luke 2: 10-11). It is very interesting where this gospel is read today, on the second Sunday of Advent, in larger numbers. (Also obviously elsewhere, but now we look at only the flashing stars of Bethlehem on this map). Where do Advent stars flash? The northernmost points: Norway, Alaska, the Baltics, Estonia, Denmark. Then below: Ireland, England, Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Russia. Turkey, Iran. Morocco, Mauritania, Guinea, Chad, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the states and cities of the eastern and western coasts of the USA, in high density. (Interesting statistic: Slightly more than 328 million people live in the U.S. About 71% of that, about 229.6 million, are Protestants. The daily rate of Bible readers is 16% of the total population, with a minimum of 46-47 million). Then further south: Mexico, Venezuela, the east coast of Brazil, Chile, Argentina. Asia to the west of India, Myanmar, Thailand, east coast of China, Japan, Indonesia. And the eastern part of Australia. This marks about 45 countries where by the third Sunday of Advent, by now, nearly 3.5 million people are reading the good news on the map of Jesus. This is the active, marked part of the 2.2 billion Christians on this one counter. However, it is also a fact, according to reliable data, at least 1.5-1.6 billion of our Christian brethren will hear this daily encouragement today and in all days of this very special pandemia Advent:
stand and look up, for your salvation is near!
You will be there among them, will you ?! Blessed Advent days!
From Budapest/Hungary your brother in this faith and happy Advent hope
