[RCL]: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44 How does your time look between now and Christmas? Is your calendar for the next four weeks a jumble of “musts”? There’s shopping, wrapping, shipping, delivering. There are the Christmas cards. There’s the tree to be bought, trimmed, and watered every day. There’s the outside decorating….

Imagine that it is the predawn of human history. You are a human inhabitant of the Northern Hemisphere of the planet Earth. You know nothing of written words and your language is plain and simple. And all around you the world is full of terrible dangers. Your life is threatened everywhere you turn. But there…