For most of the past week, the question that has been perpetually asked by newscasters and interviewers has been “What are you thankful for?” My list is rather lengthy: a wife, daughter, family, good job, nice house, wonderful friends, fun hobbies, and a God who loves me enough to die and rise again for me.

Included in that list are many of the people I’ve encountered along my journey of life. Some of whom I met while within some of its darker chapters. People who taught me a very important lesson about life and about who people really are.

The truth of the matter is, because of the reality of sin, each of us is born with a hunger within us. Sometimes, we are blessed to find the answer to that hunger by embracing a relationship with Jesus Christ. Other times, that hunger is made worse by catastrophe and tragedy. I have met so many souls who are spending their lives either running away from something or desperately trying to fill that void within. Sometimes, they’re trying to do both.

I can relate well to those who are running away, because I’ve been there myself. When I shared my testimony with you all last week, I mentioned that during my college years that I was angry with God for taking away my dreams. I was running away from God, trying to drive him out of my life by living a lifestyle of partying and debauchery.

I wasn’t alone. There were others trying to run away from things too. One young woman I knew was a wild girl, drank, smoked pot, slept around, you name it. I dated her for a time and in a single moment of surprising honesty, she admitted to me that she had been raped at age 14. She told me that since she was “already ruined,” what did it matter now what she did? Every substance she consumed, every person she brought home with her was one more attempt to help her forget, to help her run away from the pain of that horrible event.

Another friend, child of divorce, spent his childhood being traded between his parent’s new families, each one doing their best to use him as a weapon against the other. He was looking for acceptance, love, affection, all the things he’d never felt from his family.

Still another rages at the world. All of his troubles are the cause of someone else. The black people did this to him, the Latinos that, and those darn liberals. He festers in his hatred and his bigotry, blaming others for the hurt and the emptiness within.

The fact that these and all the others like them will not find the answers they seek in the directions they have gone goes without saying. They’re trying to fill a God-shaped hole with something other than God himself: anger, drugs, sex, power, money, whatever. People like them are the source of much hurt and evil in the world themselves, but the truth is they are not evil. They’re lost. They’re hurting, and they’re lashing out and acting out the only way they know how.

The Gospel lesson from Mark once again repeats the call from Jesus for us to keep awake. As I said before, that is a call to diligence, a call to embrace the work that God has set before us to transform the world and lives of the people we encounter every day. But Mark puts a slightly different spin on the story, including a call from Jesus to be mindful of signs and indicators.

His example is a good one. A fig tree becoming tender and putting forth leaves is indicative of changing seasons. Winter is becoming spring. Spring is becoming summer. But is a man consumed by anger? What is within them that drives their fits of rage and hatred? What is a woman drowning her sorrows in substance abuse? What is it within her that has driven her to the bottom of a bottle? No one chooses those things without reason.

People like this are all around us every day, even here in Davis. They’re in your schools and workplaces. They’re the people who check you out at the store or the folks you smile at walking down the street. Many of them are running away. Many of them are trying to drown the pain. Many of them are looking for something to fill that void inside. We have that something. We have Christ.

We’ve been talking for several weeks now about God’s call to evangelism. And this is where evangelism gets really scary for us. Because it’s far worse than knocking on doors. That’s easy. Real evangelism is about walking with people in their darkest hours. It’s sticking with them, no matter what. It’s about being there when no one else will be.

That takes a lot of work. A lot of dedication. A lot of patience and persistence. A lot of love. But you know something, when we do these things we model the truth of what God is doing. God never abandons us. It doesn’t matter what we do or where we go, what happens to us, God is always with us.

What is true for us is true for them. And when we stand with them, they will see Christ hidden behind our face.

Advent is about God standing alongside us as our lives are buffed and battered by the turmoil of the world in which we live. Advent is about the promise of God coming into our very midst, about his incarnation as a child named Jesus. The Advent word, Immanuel, means “God is with us.” You and I can make that real for someone else. We can show Immanuel by living a life of proclamation, by keeping awake and keeping aware of the world around us and what it does to people and then responding as Christ would, with love, healing, comfort, and peace.

It is what we have received. It is what we are called to spread to others. Amen.