The Leader Magazine (Menno Media) has provided a beautiful worship resource for this year’s Advent season. In this resource, we are encouraged to “Dare to Imagine God’s Embrace” on the second Sunday of Advent, the Sunday when we light the peace candle on our Advent wreaths. God’s embrace is such a warm and inviting way of imagining peace. Enveloped in the expansive embrace of God, we can breathe, inhaling the assurance that God has included us in a great love - not a limited or selective love, but a love that counts us as beloved among all things beloved. And here, our impulse to do what is right and just is both rooted in and surrounded by love.
 
Jesus spoke of the peace and love of God’s embrace in his Sermon on the Mount when he taught his listeners to be like their Father in Heaven by being pervasively loving. In his great call for peace, Jesus instructed, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” The peace of God is known to us when we see that God shines on us all, rains on us all, and loves us all.