Our Advent word for today is “lost.” Even with GPS, it’s easy to get lost on a journey. It would be great if our faith journey came with a GPS, but then again in a way it does. The Holy Spirit is always present within us to guide us, nudge us, whisper to us. Just like with the GPS in our car or on our phone, the problem is that we have to listen. I don’t know how many times I’ve ignored my GPS only to hear those words, “recalculating route.” When it comes to following God’s will in my life, I can easily imagine the Holy Spirit, sometimes whispering and sometimes shouting, similar words to me. "Recalculate your route!" 

Jeremiah 31 offers wonderful inspirational words that remind us of where this journey we are on will lead us if we just remain faithful: “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke … says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”

We are the children of this promised new covenant which, if we follow Christ, has been written on our hearts. The new covenant was brought to us on that first Christmas when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but there is so much more yet to come if we stay on the journey. Because at the end of it all, we shall know God and our sins will not just be forgiven, they will be forgotten. We will have finally reached our destination.