Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Click here to listen to my Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster on ‘life to the full’, or read the full text below:
Life to the Full
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the season when Christians celebrate the coming of Christ.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus gave us a simple reason why he came. He said: ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’.
Most of the people Jesus was speaking to were poor. They lived under Roman occupation.
Jesus didn’t promise them riches or freedom from oppression. He didn’t promise them a life of comfort and convenience. That’s not what he promises us, either. When Jesus spoke of ‘life to the full’, I think he meant a life full of purpose and meaning.
As an undergraduate student, I was required to read Man’s Search for Meaning by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. Frankl, a psychologist, concluded that the people who coped better in the Nazi concentration camps were those who gave meaning to their harrowing experiences. They did not focus on themselves – they imagined a world beyond their personal suffering.
The professor who assigned the book was a Catholic priest. He insisted that the English-translation title of the book, Man’s Search for Meaning, got it all wrong. He said: ‘Humankind does not search for meaning. No – we give meaning to what happens in our lives. We create our own purpose’.
During Advent, Christians speak about Jesus using the Hebrew name Emmanuel, which means ‘God with us’. We are comforted by the idea of a God who lives among us, helping us create meaningful lives. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.
The book of Ecclesiastes opens with this lament: ‘Meaningless, meaningless, life is meaningless.’ But then the rest of the book describes all the ways people give their lives meaning: through hard and honest work, through loving relationships, through enjoying the simple things like eating and drinking together.
Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, sometimes I struggle. But on this first Sunday of Advent, I’m celebrating that we are all crafted in the image of a creative God. Humanity’s creative potential means that all of us can ‘have life, and have it to the full’.