Month: December 2011

Called to Advent–Keeping

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photo by Josh Scholten

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Galatians 5:13-14

Staying married, therefore, is not mainly about staying in love. It is about keeping covenant. “Till death do us part” or “As long as we both shall live” is a sacred covenant promise – the same kind Jesus made with His bride when He died for her.
John Piper

My husband and I attended a wedding in an outdoor park years ago where the officiating pastor asked the couple to vow to each other to stay together “as long as we both shall will.” I remember thinking that was the most useless vow I’d ever heard because it was no vow at all. It was a poetic and tempting string of words, like a strand of colored lights buried in the snow, pretty but pointless. There was no promise to keep covenant with one another despite everything that can happen in life. There was no commitment to see things through, to be steadfast in the face of trouble, to not wander from the path set before us simply because we have the freedom and desire to do so.

Keeping covenant is particularly significant tonight in light of the news that one of our body, one of our church, has been given a devastating diagnosis of leukemia. He will be transferred to a leukemia unit at the regional university hospital to begin life-saving treatment. His wife, loving him as she vowed to do when they married, keeps faith with him through this toughest battle of all, serving his needs with her strength and endurance. The body of the church will keep them both uplifted in prayer, and provide for their needs as best we are able.

We are called by advent to keeping covenant–with each other, with the body of Christ, with God Himself. The complication is that we have been created with the freedom to choose not to do so or only do so as long we shall “will.” How genuine is our commitment?

The baby in the manger was God’s most tangible keeping of the covenant with His children. He came to us, stayed with us, died for us, and remains committed to us as we wait His return. We are kept whole, even through our greatest earthly battles and in our dying, by His love.


There is nothing which so certifies the genuineness of a man’s faith as his patience and his patient endurance, his keeping on steadily in spite of everything.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Called to Advent–journeying

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In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
2 Corinthians 11:26-27


Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed; and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrance and hidden strength in the remembrance of Him as “in all points tempted like as we are,” bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us.
Alexander MacLaren

We are called to journey in our lives; some no further than the backyard, some to the ends of the earth, some to the moon and back. The journey is not about the miles covered but it is about the internal trek we all must make on the crooked road of our hearts, searching for that straight path back to God. Much of the journey, whether internal or external, is perilous and it is more than reassuring to find the signs that He has been down that road before us, knowing the temptations, and bearing the grief we will face.

There is but one map available and one map maker. All roads lead to home and home is where He waits for us.

To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world’s sake – even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death – that little by little we start to come alive.
Frederick Buechner

Journeying East (from Tolkien), painting by Ted Nasmith

Called to Advent–Imploring

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photo by Josh Scholten

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
2 Corinthians 5:20


Gentlemen, I have lived a long time and am convinced that God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? I move that prayer imploring the assistance of Heaven be held every morning before we proceed to business.
– Benjamin Franklin

We are humbled in our need. We are humbled in our helplessness. We are humbled in His attention directed to us when we are unworthy.

So we implore God for His assistance and reconciliation, recognizing and acknowledging our need, our helplessness, and our unworthiness. We are the sparrow on the ground, fallen from the nest, in trouble without His protecting Hand.

Hear our cry.

Called to Advent–Hoping

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photo by Josh Scholten


Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40: 30-31

I haven’t found hope effectively marketed in a tablet, elixir, capsule or syringe, but the pharmaceutical companies certainly try. Yet every day I see young people come in to my clinic with a serious deficit of hope expecting that a pill just might make the difference for them. They have no clear purpose or sense of belonging, too often ready to toss their lives on the scrap heap. Some have already been experimenting with throwing themselves away by drinking or drugging away their fears and anxieties, or cutting or burning their skin to feel something akin to relief by controlling the pain they feel, or addicted to distortions of basic desires like food or sex.

It is discouragement, depression and disappointment that becomes a cancer that metastasizes throughout their life, overwhelming their daily experience of everything around them, destroying their joy, their smiles and laughter. It causes all hope to hemorrhage. And a pill can’t change it.

I can’t prescribe the hope described in Isaiah 40. I can’t even recommend it in the government setting in which I work. I can only show them it is possible; I can tell them that others in dire horrible circumstances, like prisoners of war, or Nazi concentration camps, have felt just as badly as they do. Despite such torture, they found their way to a time in their lives where there is purpose and meaning and light and laughter, that there always is a reason to keep on going, to survive and soar above rather than be engulfed and subdued by earthly worries.

Hope is not elusive, expensive or hidden. We need not go looking for it outside ourselves. It is within, pulsing deep in our hearts. Always has been. Always will be.


To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
G.K. Chesterton

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.
G.K. Chesterton

Called to Advent–Glorifying

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Orion Nebula


Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke 2:14

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Luke 2:20

Over the last twenty four hours I’ve had the privilege to both sing in and listen to three chorale concerts of sacred music celebrating advent and the incarnation. Our earthly voices, sincere as they are, are only a mere echo of the angel chorus that rang out over the fields glorifying the birth of Jesus. We can’t begin to imagine what that sounded like.

During our time on earth, we have no greater purpose than to glorify God with our hearts, words and voices–the Father for the life He breathed in us, the Son for the life He gave up for us, and the Spirit for the new life given to us. We appreciate and admire Him, we adore and revere Him, we give our affection and love to him, and we dedicate our lives to His service.

Most of all, we enjoy Him for the joy He brings to all people. And we will sing out, like the shepherds did after all the things they had heard and seen. We have heard and seen even more than they.


In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
C.S. Lewis

The aim of God in creating and redeeming us is the delight He Himself enjoys in seeing His creatures delight in Him. As Jonathan Edwards said, “[The] glorifying of God is nothing but rejoicing in the manifestations of Him.” In other words, the purpose of the knowledge of God is the enjoyment of God because “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him.”
John Piper

Called to Advent–Feeding

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He has filled the hungry with good things…
Luke 1:53

Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
Matthew 14:16

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.
John 6:51

If there is one thing universal about human beings, it is that we must eat to grow, stay healthy, and stay alive. Feeding a hungry person is one of the most nurturing and loving actions available to us in our outreach to others. I learned this first as a nurses’ aide in a rest home when I was a teenager. The most disabled residents depended on me to feed them, bite full by bite full. I could not rush them or they might not swallow properly and could aspirate. I needed to be aware of what they liked and didn’t like or it might end up back in my lap in much less appetizing form.

Later, as a mother feeding my children, especially late at night rocking in the rocking chair, I found those times to be some of the most precious hours I ever spent with them. I was able to make a tangible difference in their lives with a gift from myself, of myself.

So too, we are fed by God–from His Word, from His Spirit, from His Hand at the Supper as He breaks the bread, from His Body. Our eyes are opened, our hearts burn within us.

But the ironic truth is that with the Incarnation, the world–we mere human beings–fed and nourished God Himself. He thrived, grew, and lived among us because His mother nourished Him from her own body and His earthly father had a trade that made it possible to feed his family.

Feeding others as we are fed. Feeding God when He chose to be helpless in our hands, trusting and needing us as much as we trust and need Him.


The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.
J.I. Packer

Called to Advent–Expecting

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The Visitation by Mariotto Albertinelli

In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.
Psalm 5:3

Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of spiritual life.
Simone Weil

During Advent we are pregnant with anticipated possibility, expectant like Mary and Elizabeth, the new life growing inside us about to change us forever. And like Mary and Elizabeth, we are not in this alone, but are expectant side by side, in a community of support. Together we celebrate the coming dawn of love and life that will overshadow the ever-present darkness of hatred, suffering and death.

Be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised.
Loretta Ross-Gotta

I treasure (Mary’s) story because it forces me to ask: When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say a “yes” that will change me forever?
Kathleen Norris