Westside Stories Advent Podcast: John Gunter

When I received word that (waiting) was the theme of this Advent series, I very much resonate with it. This theme of death has been in my life the last 12 to 15 months, and some real critical friends have passed away suddenly unexpectedly starting about 15 months ago. It really has been an interesting and painful time to look my mortality into the face, but also just entering into the harsh reality that this world is very temporary. Second thing is just even now turning in my fifties, kind of processing even my body, starting to not respond the way it used to respond. I've been blessed with wonderful health over the years, but there's clearly this theme of my body not doing what it used to be able to do. And I'd say even the third thing I've been thinking about along this question is being single, having never been married and never expected to be 50 and not married without kids. How do I steward that best in the midst of the pain of missing that? And one of those is, man, I really am passionate about the gospel going to places that it's not. And that's something being single actually helps me with. So lean into that instead of kind of running from it.

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Especially as I've been trying to ramp up for the Advent season. The scene is this element of eternity breaking into the temporal and the person of Christ, and we really are hopeless. Without the Christmas story. We're really hopeless without Christ breaking into this thing called life, the temporality of the world. I can remember sitting years ago with my sister and her children and some of my family in a Christmas Eve service and seeing my nephew will being held while we're singing the Christmas story. And I remember looking at Will going "goodness, that was our savior". Completely dependent. I don't know how exactly to grapple with that, but I know the Lord wants us to grapple with that. During the Advent season, this fantastic earth shattering interruption through the birth of a baby that became a Savior. And that's what we're waiting for on December 25th, this narrative that we can live in from Easter till the end of December, man, this is that story that has to be repeated constantly because we forget it daily.

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- John Gunter