“Do you know what the five most sinful cities are in the U.S.?” Wil asked me the other day.

“New York? Chicago? LA?” For sure those were the top three.

Well, one out of three isn’t bad. According to the article Wil read in the Christian Post, the five most sinful cities in America are:

Number 5: Atlanta

Number 4: Philadelphia

Number 3: Los Angeles

Number 2: Houston

Number 1: the original Sin City—Las Vegas

Chicago and New York City didn’t even make the top ten according to the WalletHub’s Vice Index study the Christian Post article cited. The study’s baseline for sinful behavior was anger and hatred, jealousy, excesses and vices, greed and lust—the Seven Deadly Sins.

As part of its study, WalletHub pondered, “What leads many of us to partake in sinful behavior may seem like a mystery, especially when those behaviors become common in our daily lives.”

If sinful behavior is a mystery, then God’s Word has already revealed whodunit and the motive for our bent to sinning. The Apostle Paul explained it in Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Or as the New England Primer put it, A is for Adam as in “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All.”

Sin and Advent aren’t incompatible.

Advent is also a mystery, a mystery wrapped in promise—a mystery first given to “A is for Adam” et al; then whispered to the prophets that a virgin would conceive a son whose name would be Immanuel, that an insignificant town would bring forth the one to be ruler in Israel, and that people living in the most sinful cities in the world would see a great light.

Advent is mystery wrapped in the Son’s name, Immanuel—God with us—and revealed when the Word, who was with God and was God, became flesh and dwelt among us, which remains a wondrous mystery to me.

If in “Adam’s Fall We Sinned All”, then in Jesus how “much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:17)

To those who sit in deep darkness in the most sinful places in the world, to those who sit in the murky shadows of sin and to those who don’t think they are sitting in darkness at all, Advent is gift-wrapped in life and light—there for us to open, to receive, to believe and become sons and daughters of God.

As we walk through Advent this month, let’s ponder and treasure in our hearts this gift from “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
born that we no more may die,
born to raise us from the earth,
born to give us second birth.