The First Light of Hope
Dr Justine Toh opens our Advent 2025 series with a reflection on the way love breaks through, just as light breaks through the darkness.
STEFF FENTON
For our twenty-third Advent 2025 devotional, Steff Fenton shares how Advent reveals a God whose love expands our imagination and calls us into justice, reconciliation and belonging.
An Expansive Love
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
If ever there was a time we needed reconciliation, now must be it, right? Many of us are concluding a year where we have absorbed the harsh impacts of social division. We’ve seen politicians pushing down, realities being misrepresented in the news, conversations of othering, and algorithms that confirm our biases. In a divided world, there is little exposure to empathy, dialogue, humility and difference. We can end up misunderstanding, rejecting, keeping our distance, drawing lines.
In 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Paul writes to the Corinthian church after they had rejected him for not fulfilling the qualities they expected of a leader - Paul was poor and humble while “super apostles” were successful and prestigious. Misunderstandings turned into othering, and judgement turned into rejection.
As a transgender person, I can relate to this experience. Trans people have been pulled into the centre of dividing discussions, media stories that misrepresents us, and intensely politicised debates. These headlines often paint trans people as outcasts and predators, and I worry about losing access to healthcare, to travel, to playing hockey on the weekend, and more.
Today’s passage speaks into this context by reminding us of the newness of Christ that centres reconciliation, and my soul is soothed with hope. In a world of divisive noise that feels impossible to break through, maybe we can get through this. Together.
Christ comes with a powerful force of forgiveness and love. A Love that crosses our divide, leaves judgement behind, and draws us into closeness. When Love breaks in, this connecting kindness changes us.
Our invitation is to channel this transformative Love into a ministry of reconciliation. To replace the “old” ways of division and distance, misunderstanding and othering, with Love’s connection and closeness, understanding and common ground. It’s a Divine energy that spurs us towards curiosity for people across the divide, empathy for those who are fiercely different to us, and kindness to those we have judged. To break through with Love, instead.
In this process, we open ourselves for our biases to be shaken and our “old” to be challenged. As we draw optimistically close to Christmas, and the day Divinity comes near, we prepare for our worlds to change, and a “new” force of Love to take over.
It is challenging to think about the radical hospitality needed to soften our hearts beyond our world’s ever-hardening lines. Yet, I believe that if Christ can cross the divide to show us kindness and love, and Paul can reconcile with the Corinthian community, this ministry of reconciliation must be possible for us today. If we do it together.
When Love breaks in, Love’s kindness makes us new.
Reflective Questions:
Who do I hold strong judgements about?
Who can I show more kindness and curiosity towards?
Reflective Exercises:
Take three deep breaths in and out. On the fourth breath, breathe in and say, “I accept this Love”, breathe out and say, “I extend this Love”. Repeat for another five breaths, or until you feel concluded.
Steff Fenton is a genderqueer pastor, writer, speaker and theologian helping people discover a more equitable and expansive Christian faith. As of 2025, they have co-founded an affirming church in Sydney Australia; been featured on national TV, radio and press; worked in social justice and LGBTIQA+ mental health, graduated as valedictorian with a Masters of Divinity, and published a book, Gender Expansive Faith.
This devotional is the twenty-third in a series of daily email devotionals for Advent 2025 reflecting on the realities of our broken world along with the unshakable hope that love still breaks through. It explores how God’s love disrupts, heals, and transforms - breaking through darkness, despair, and injustice to bring light, joy, and renewal.
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Common Grace is a diverse movement of individuals, churches and communities passionate about Jesus and justice. We have come together as those from different Christian traditions who stand in the continuity of the historic Christian faith, centred on the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ as witnessed to in holy scripture. This series highlights the diversity of followers of Jesus across these lands. These voices may not agree with one another (or with you), but they are each an expression of longing for the God whose love we see break through in Jesus.
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