Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 9

December 9, 2007, 8:35 am; posted by
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Sunday, December 9, 2007
Second Sunday in Advent
Fling wide the portals of your heart;
Make it a temple, set apart
From earthly use for heaven’s employ,
Adorned with prayer and love and joy.
” (From Lift Up Your Heads, Eternal Gates by George Weissel; in the Vespers Reading in The Divine Hours)

This hymn expresses almost perfectly the sentiment of Advent. The first verse essentially says, “Jesus is on the way;” and our response is summed up in this second verse. Because the Savior is here, our response must be to open our lives completely to Him. We “fling wide the portals of our hearts,” giving Him complete access to our lives, to tinker in whatever nooks and crannies He wishes to change. The goal of all this is holiness, that is, we wish for our hearts to be “set apart,” different from the rest of the world. We have different purposes: we have moved from “earthly use” to “heaven’s employ,” trading in human purposes for God’s purposes in our lives. We also have a different sense of what makes us beautiful: “prayer and love and joy” serve as our adornments rather than whatever the world is calling beautiful at the present moment.

In what ways are you pursuing holiness today? Let me suggest that the hymn’s message is a wise one. In order for us to become set apart, in order for us to allow God’s purposes to shape and mold our desires, we first need to “fling wide” open the gates to our heart. Our first step has to be to allow Christ unfettered access to our lives.

We often pay lip service to this without realizing what it really means. It means that in a sense we can never be at home here, as many in the world are. Our sense of security cannot come from our jobs, our homes, our nation, our possessions, for allegiance to Christ may (probably will) threaten these things from time to time. Instead, our sense of security has to come from its best and only source: from God himself. “All other ground is sinking sand,” says another hymn, and this is true. To become truly holy, truly set apart, can be a painful process of letting go of other allegiances that are comfortable to us.

May the next few days of Advent be for you a time of “flinging wide” the gates to your heart, and allowing Christ access. Even when it’s scary, even when it’s painful, may you find your security not in created things, but in God himself. May this be so not for your own sake alone, but for the whole world you can touch with the hands of Christ.


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