By Scott Elliott

Advent has begun! Twinkling Christmas lights, tasty treats and fragrant evergreen fill our senses. The faces of children glow with delight at the sight of Santa at malls, toys on shelves and the glitter of the season. Even adults have begun to smile a bit more, our hearts warmed not by a toasty fire or the Florida sun, but the love that permeates the season.

With Advent much of humanity begins to focus on the promise of a better way, a better world. We respond to the hope that promise brings with great joy and warm hearts. We not only feel freer to show more love, but we experience a happy call to it, allowing ourselves to be beckoned to open our hearts to others with outpourings of cheer and hugs and smiles and gifts and blessings. And we open our hearts not just to family and friends, but to neighbors, even to strangers far and wide.

All this love in the weeks of Advent, the season of Christmas, gives us a delicious taste of the peace many of us believe God has promised. As a result, we acquire more hope, feel more joy and we love more, and so our experience of peace increases.

Christmas is a marvelous perennial miracle that happily arrives without fail in our midst - and what a blessing it is. Christmastime is proof that the promise of peace on earth is not pie-in-the-sky, but, an available alternative within our grasp. Advent is the annual beginning of that proof, all of the promise of Christmas, the hope and joy of the season, the blossoming love so satisfying to our souls, and the precious taste of peace is just getting under way. Pray it is one day that lasts all year long.

The Rev. Scott Elliott is pastor at Riviera United Church of Christ, 451 Riviera Drive N.E., Palm Bay. Call (321) 723-3963.