Friends, many mythologies and philosophies in the ancient world held that time is cyclical; it just goes round and round. Many people today, on the other hand, hold that time is meaningless; it is just one thing after another. The Bible says no to both of those finally despairing understandings of time. As we see in the readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent, time has a trajectory; it moves toward its fulfillment in Christ, who is Emmanuel—“God is with us.”