Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 25

12/25/2007, 7:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Christmas Day
“This is the revelation of God’s love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him.” (I John 4:9, in the Midday Reading in The Divine Hours)

Christmas Days come and go so fast. This year, I will be celebrating my 30th Christmas and I cannot tell you in detail about any single one of them. I only have snippets of memories here and there. I can remember being about 7 or 8 and arriving home from my grandparents’ house after midnight, sitting bleary-eyed before the lighted tree, trying to squeeze another few minutes of joy from the day. I can remember being 12 and starring in our church’s Christmas pageant, The Sixth-Grade Scrooge, and experiencing the rush of making an audience laugh for the first time. I can remember being 23 and visiting Jill’s parents, listening to her sister ring handbells at the local Methodist church.

Because Christmases are so fast and furious, it is vain to try to use them to communicate very much. We say that Christmas is about family. And about love. And about Jesus. And about giving. And about feasting. With all these Christmas ideals swirling about, it’s no wonder we don’t know any of them very deeply! We try to make the holiday do too much.

This year, I invite you into a deeper idea of what Christmas is. Because, first and foremost, Christmas is not about any of those things I have just mentioned. Most of all, Christmas is about God showing us how much He loves us. When we look into the manger, and we see the Baby lying there, we see God’s love more fully than we see it anywhere else. God gave us many good gifts before Jesus: water and food, summer and winter, the Law, the Prophets. And God has given us many good gifts since Jesus — our families, our homes, our churches, each other. Yet all those gifts point back to that one Greatest Gift, sending His Son to earth for our sake. His presence with us is the best evidence that God indeed loves us and longs to draw us to Him.

May you know that deep love of God this Christmas, and may the Baby of Bethlehem remind you always of how deeply God loves us.

Advent Devotional — Monday, December 24

12/24/2007, 7:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Monday, December 24, 2007
Christmas Eve
“Come now and look upon the works of the Lord, what awesome things he has done on earth.
‘Be still, then, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth.’
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” (Psalm 46:9, 11-12, from the Vespers Psalm in the Christmas Eve reading in The Divine Hours)

Psalm 46 is a hymn to God’s strength. “We will not fear,” reads v. 2, “though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” At times, this language about God’s strength turns violent: “He breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire,” reads v. 10.

We don’t often associate Christmas Eve with God’s strength. It is a cozy holiday; in the eyes of the world, it is a time to celebrate the universal beauty of mother and child. In the eyes of the church, it is a time to celebrate God’s humility, not divine strength.

Yet what if we were to recognize that Christmas Eve was in fact the greatest show of God’s strength the world has ever known? It was not earthquake, wind, and fire; it was not the raising up of one nation and the dashing of another; it was not the divine voice atop the mountain, frightening the people of Israel. Instead, it was the conscious laying aside of those things. In the coming of Jesus, God was strong enough not to rely on His “brute force,” His ability to cause the rise and fall of people and empires; instead, God was strong enough to come as a helpless Baby, convinced that what would conquer the world and steal away every human heart would not be thunder, but self-giving. Of all the works of the Lord, none was more awesome than this.

What if we learned to define strength in this way? We Christians sometimes believe the lies of the world, that the truly strong are those who can assert their will upon others. We tend to believe, like everyone else, that the strong are those who can punish with shock and awe, that the strong devastate the world. But what if we started to believe that the strong don’t always look strong? What if we believe that the true strength of God lay not in His ability to overwhelm us, but to give Himself completely away for us?

It is the weak who must constantly demonstrate to others how strong they are. It is the strong who are so sure of their strength that they don’t have to constantly put it on display. It is the strong who are comfortable giving themselves away, knowing that in God they will always have enough.

The divine strength of God, the strong arm of Israel, lays in a manger tonight and begs to be held and nursed and cuddled. Can we find it in our hearts to give ourselves away like our strong God?

Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 23

12/23/2007, 8:30 am -- by Mike | 1 Comment

Sunday, December 23, 2007
Fourth Sunday in Advent
“Purify my conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in me a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (The Prayer Appointed for the Week in The Divine Hours)

Do you ever wonder about the innkeeper who provided a stable where the baby Jesus could be born? I’m never sure if he’s one of the good guys because he provided some place for the baby Jesus when the inn was completely full, or one of the bad guys because he didn’t rustle up something a little better for this very pregnant little family. I suppose, as with most people, it’s a mixture of both. Perhaps he had kind intentions — he could have done more, but he could have done less too.

Whatever the case, the innkeeper provides a challenge for us today, because so many of us are like the innkeeper. We’re on the fence in our lives. We’re not ready to totally throw God out of our lives into the cold; but neither are we ready to fully embrace God, bringing Him into the inner sanctum, especially if that means disturbing some prestigious guests like pride and arrogance. And so we choose a compromise, a stable if you will: God is welcome, but only on the margins of our lives.

It is always tempting to offer Christ a stable. It means that we can view Him from a distance, from inside the inn, where it is warm and cozy, and not have to deal with the cold and hay and straw and animals of the manger. It means that we can enjoy the “Christmas story” without really having to make the reality of Christ’s birth a permanent, year-round part of our lives.

This prayer perfectly expresses the sentiment of Advent. As Christians, we should not want to find just a stable for Jesus, a place on the periphery of our lives where we can enjoy Jesus from a distance. Instead, we want to provide Christ with the mansion of our hearts. We do not want to keep Jesus on the outside, but fully invite Him in so that He can change us. And so we pray for purity; we pray that God, by His constant presence in our lives, will purify us so that Jesus will have a fitting home to come to. We pray that God will touch every corner of our hearts during this season and make them a place fitting for the King of Heaven to come and live.

Advent Devotional — Saturday, December 22

12/22/2007, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Saturday, December 22, 2007
“Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps;
Fire and hail, snow and fog, tempestuous wind, doing his will;
Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars;
Wild beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged birds;
Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the world;
Young men and maidens, old and young together;
Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his Name only is exalted, his splendor is over earth and heaven.
He has raised up strength for his people and praise for all his loyal servants, the children of Israel, a people who are near him. Hallelujah!” (Psalm 148:7-19, from the Midday Psalm in The Divine Hours)

When the Psalmist wrote these words, who knew that they would come to a culmination in a stable, on an ordinary summer night, in the village of Bethlehem?

Creation has always risen to praise its Creator. With the exception of humanity, gifted with the power of choice, creation cannot do otherwise. Birds flying north for the summer and south for the winter, rhythmic waves beating the shore, trees shading from tender pink to lush green to burnt orange to bare brown — all these things give the Creator praise, for they live their lives exactly as they were created. Of course, we can choose to live a life that does not give praise to God, which we do frequently and with disastrous effect. But there is nothing quite like a human being living the life God has created him or her to live; just as with the rest of creation, it gives silent testimony to the goodness of God’s design in our lives. Psalm 148 envisions just this scene: creation rising up to praise God, led by the capstone and culmination of creation, human beings created in His image.

It seemed an idea too cosmic to happen on earth; and yet here it is, happening. The Son of God lays in a manger bed and all around him is creation, bearing Him silent praise. The canticle O Magnum Mysterium says it well: “O great mystery and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the Son of God, lying in their manger!”

In their lowing and braying, and in the gentle breeze, creation continued on, exactly as it was intended. But humans, too, gave Him praise: Joseph and His mother Mary, the shepherds, and soon the wise men came, and of their free will, gave honor to the newborn King. The vision of Psalm 148 finally was realized as all creation came into God’s presence in a new way to give Him praise. Let us join our voices with all creation.

Advent Devotional — Friday, December 21

12/21/2007, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Friday, December 21, 2007
“Now His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside, sent in a message asking for Him. A crowd was sitting round Him at the time the message was passed to Him, ‘Look, Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside asking for You.’ He replied, ‘Who are My mother and My brothers? Anyone who does the will of God, that person is My brother and sister and mother.’” (Mark 3:31-35, from the morning reading in The Divine Hours)

In our culture, Christmas has taken on a variety of meanings. One of the dearest meanings to many people is “family”: Christmas is a time to be with family, to re-connect with relatives that live distantly and to forgive old grudges that may be standing in the way of the family being all it could be. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this sentiment, and Jill and Grace and I are very happy to be spending the time before Christmas through Christmas Day with my family, and some time after Christmas with her family. People’s families are (or at least can be) wonderful gifts from God.

Yet we should not push the point too far. Jesus is teaching a crowd when He was alerted that his (biological) mother and brothers were outside. Jesus uses their visit as a teaching moment. He stresses that what truly creates bonds between people is not blood, but a shared willingness to do the will of God. While blood kinships can be great, true kinship is found between people who share a passion for seeing the Kingdom of God advanced.

Maybe this will shape the way you approach this Christmas. Perhaps circumstances force you to celebrate this Christmas apart from family. This Christmas could be a time for you to discover new relationships, thicker even than blood, in your church or your Bible study. The world looks at those separated from family at Christmas as pitiful; don’t fall victim to their sympathy! Instead, take a chance and deepen these essential, eternal relationships with other Christians.

On the other hand, you may be fortunate enough to celebrate Christmas with your family. In your case, my counsel is to remember your relationships with other Christians. Don’t fall victim to the cult of family. Love them, honor them, respect them, but don’t limit your celebration to time with them; instead, remember to support and honor your relationships with others in your churches and communities during this time of year.

Advent Devotional — Thursday, December 20

12/20/2007, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Thursday, December 20, 2007
“Enlighten, Lord, and set on fire
Our spirits with Your love,
That dead to earth they may aspire
And live to joys above.” (Adapted from The Short Breviary, from the Vespers Office in The Divine Hours)

Dying to earth is heavy language. The hymn (and the Scripture that inspired it) does not encourage us to co-exist with the world, or to critique the world; it says to die to it. What does it mean to die to the world?

We often forget that sin is not just a personal choice, but a deeply ingrained reality of human life. Suppose you live in a town where the only grocery store is operated by a man who is known to abuse his wife and family. Should you shop there and support this man or not? This man’s sinful behavior puts the rest of the town in a bind, where no action is really “right” — you hate to put money in the man’s pockets, but you hate to put his family at further risk by not supporting him. Further, you have the dilemma of how exactly you’re going to get your food if you don’t support him. One man’s sin means that the whole town has to reckon with his sin and choose the lesser of several evils.

If you look at the world in this way, you will soon sense something of the enormity of sin and the impossibility of “solving” it, humanly speaking. We cannot root sin out of the world simply because, like the grocer above, its present reality ensures its future reality. As long as one person is sinning, we all will be pushed into sinning. “As sin entered into the world through one man…” said Paul, and we can see how that is the case.

Part of what we must do as Christians is to die to this reality. To the extent possible, we should “opt out” of such a death-dealing culture. This is not to say we become total separatists, and live our lives in total denial of the earthly world in which we live. But it is to say that we are self-conscious about our way of life as being separate and incompatible with a sinful world.

We do this when we create and strengthen our churches to be little outposts of the Kingdom of God, little places where the Way of Christ is followed and there are different rules. We do not deny there is sin in our midst, but rather than blindly following a culture where sin is an established fact, we seek to be different. We seek to lay aside one way of living completely for another.

Advent Devotional — Wednesday, December 19

12/19/2007, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Wednesday, December 19, 2007
“The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.” (Psalm 29:5, from the Midday Psalm in The Divine Hours)

My daughter Grace is now at the age (20 months) where she loves to hear stories of when she was a newborn. “Do you want Daddy to tell you a story?,” I say as we settle into the rocker before her afternoon nap. “Yeah,” she nods.

And so I do; I tell her the story of her first night in the world, where her grandparents and parents took turns holding her and eating pizza in the Birth Center. I tell her that her grandparents came to stay with us for a week after she was born, and all we did was watch her and eat chocolate. Now, she’s started to provide sound effects for the stories; and so when I say how relieved we were to hear her cry for the first time, she mimics the sharp staccato of a newborn cry: “Weh! Weh! Weh!”

It is this voice that we are accustomed to associating with the Lord at this time of year: the precious little yelps from a newborn to be nursed or held. And yet we dare never forget that the voice that cried like this is powerful beyond measure. This Psalm envisions tall cedars being broken, not by the strong arm or might of the Lord, but merely by His voice. What love the Father has for us, to choose to limit Himself to humanity for our salvation!

The Author of the universe, like my daughter, begged His earthly parents to tell him stories; the voice that broke the cedars has become a baby’s cry.

Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 18

12/18/2007, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Tuesday, December 18, 2007
“Because you have kept my commandment to persevere, I will keep you safe in the time of trial which is coming for the whole world, to put the people of the world to the test. I am coming soon: hold firmly to what you already have, and let no one take your victor’s crown away from you. Anyone who proves victorious I will make into a pillar in the sanctuary of my God, and it will stay there for ever; I will inscribe on it the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which is coming down from my God in heaven, and my own new name as well.” (Revelation 3:10-14, from the Morning Reading in The Divine Hours)

Sometimes, we think of Advent as just a precursor to Christmas. If we use Advent for spiritual preparation, we think of it as preparing the way for Jesus to come into our hearts in a new, spiritual way.

But Advent is more than that, because the Bible talks repeatedly about Christ’s return, a time when Christ will come back to the earth in a tangible, physical way. By paying deeper attention to matters of the spirit at this time of year, we also are preparing ourselves for that return of Christ, making room for Him in our hearts and minds.

The New Testament was written in a time when people expected that return to come imminently. Much of the New Testament, including this passage, is taken up with urging Christians to persevere until that day comes. Though we do not expect Christ’s return soon (but who can say?), the word of perseverance is a good one. Like the early Christians, we find ourselves in a society that is increasingly hostile to our beliefs. The ignorant vitriol of the new crop of atheist writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins has swayed the hearts of many people against God.

There is also a more subtle sort of secularism at work in the suburbs, which treats Christianity with a velvet barbarism, so if our children will play sports or go to birthday parties, they must do so on Sunday mornings. In such a world, we as Christians should always be striving to represent Christ well. Our lives should be characterized by gentleness, honor, nobility, and discipline. In the midst of a culture that glorifies self-destruction in so many ways, Christians must persevere in living an abundant life, even when that life is peculiar or out of place in the world. Could our life seem anything but strange to people who have not known the joy of knowing God?

Ancient Christians sensed this tension between the Christian and pagan ways of life. The Desert Fathers withdrew to solitary living in order to preserve the Christian way. Eventually, monasteries developed with the same goal: to establish and preserve some community on earth that would live out the ideals of Christ.

Maybe a good call for us modern Christians is to reclaim a streak of those early monks and nuns. Even as we go about our daily lives, we must preserve a way of living and not capitulate to a death-dealing culture. In doing this, we prepare ourselves to receive Christ with joy rather than fear when He comes again.

Advent Devotional — Monday, December 17

12/17/2007, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Monday, December 17, 2007
“Blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (Luke 1:45, from the Morning Reading in The Divine Hours)

With these words, Elizabeth commends Mary for her faith. When Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel and notified of God’s plan for her life, she does not rebel but says, “May it be with me according to your word.” She accepted God’s plan meekly because her faith was great: she believed without reservation that God would do with her child and herself what the angel promised.

As they always do for unwed mothers, Mary’s prospects seemed bleak. Her fiance considered leaving her. The townsfolk whispered. I’m sure her family wasn’t universally happy at this turn of events. And most of all, the questions of how she could ever support and adequately raise a child ate at young Mary.

And yet, despite all this, Mary clung to the promise God made to her through Gabriel: that God would raise up her child to be a mighty one, called the Son of the Most High; and that he would be the ruler in an eternal Kingdom. She stubbornly clung to this belief before this baby was born, and as he grew into a man. Even when he suffered the indignities and pain of crucifixion, there stood Mary at the foot of the cross, weeping and believing.

We Protestants ignore Mary at our peril. May we be so quick and tenacious in our faith that God will deliver on all he has promised in our lives and in this world.

Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 16

12/16/2007, 8:30 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Sunday, December 16, 2007
Third Sunday in Advent
“Look, he is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, destined to be a sign that is opposed — and a sword will pierce your soul too — so that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare.” (Luke 2:34-35, from the Morning Reading in The Divine Hours)

Last year, I had the privilege of pronouncing a blessing on our first daughter, Grace. “May He make you brave and beautiful,” I said. “May God use you to speak beauty to a cold and dead world.” A blessing I found lovely, and one I was proud to give our daughter.

In contrast, I’m not sure I’d want to pronounce on Gracie the blessing Simeon here pronounces on Jesus. It reveals that from the very start God had a purpose in Jesus’ life: to cause the rise of some, and the fall of others. In a sense, Jesus was to be a flashpoint: the central question of how one viewed God would be answered by how one viewed Jesus. Those that rejected Jesus, despite their piety and religious standing, were found to be rejecting God. And those that accepted Jesus, despite their sin and notoriety, were found to be accepting God. Indeed, Jesus’ life and person caused the secret thoughts of all these people to be laid bare; how a person looked at Jesus was a far more reliable indicator of their spiritual state than their actions.

To be a flashpoint, to cause some to rise and others to fall, to cause great social upheaval, is to live a life that rarely ends peacefully. Laying bare the thoughts of those that have a vested interest in keeping those thoughts secret is not a rewarding task. Setting up a Kingdom which is opposed to the kingdoms of this world inevitably will bring the wrath of those worldly kingdoms against you. In a sense, Simeon’s blessing on Jesus was not completely a blessing.

I am beginning to understand why Simeon told Mary that Jesus’ life would cause a sword to pierce her soul as well. When I prayed that God would use this baby girl to speak beauty to a cold and dead world, I was giving her a double-edged blessing. A pornographic and death-dealing world does not understand beauty. A world where art is a consumer product, or just another instrument to titillate and shock, is a world that does not know beauty. A world which misunderstands beauty will not understand someone who speaks beauty to it; such a world may even dislike the one who speaks beauty to it.

I, of course, do not want Gracie to be disliked by the world. Like Mary, I wish more than anything for my child to have a peaceful, ordinary life, with prosperity, peace and many loved ones. And yet for her life to be meaningful, for her to speak beauty to a world which does not understand it, or do whatever worthwhile task God calls her to, her life cannot always be easy. I pray that both Gracie and her parents have the strength to endure whatever faint echoes of the cross and the sword we have to face.

Advent Devotional — Saturday, December 15

12/15/2007, 8:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Saturday, December 15, 2007
“Grant us grace to heed their [the prophets’] warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer…” (The Prayer Appointed for the Week, in The Divine Hours, from The Book of Common Prayer)

Well, we have reached the ten-day countdown to Christmas Day. My feelings as a kid and as an adult on December 15 are very different things. As a kid, December 15 felt like a day when you could officially start believing Christmas was near. I’d counted days since the middle of October, keeping a lonely vigil over the calendar even when no one else was interested. But by December 15, reality was beginning to sink in everywhere: school was beginning to slow down for the Christmas break; even delinquent present-buyers were requesting my wish list; and even the snap in the air said that Christmas was near. And so I could respond with the joy of childhood abandon.

Fast-forward 20 or 25 years, and my response to December 15 is altogether different. For one thing, church responsibilities sink in hard and heavy at this time. Is the concert together? How are things looking for church this week and next? Christmas Eve falls on a Monday, which is just cruel to a pastor, because you basically have to have everything ready by the end of the previous week, as well as the regular Sunday service. By December 15, reality begins to sink in everywhere: you’ve got job responsibilities to attend to, as well as all the usual family and travel arrangements, and Christmas is coming soon, like it or not! No more do I respond to that inevitable date with childhood joy; now it is greeted with a healthy dose of adult dread (OK, with some joy mixed in). The reality of Christmas’s coming is different for different people; for some, it is a cause for joy and celebration, and some dread its arrival.

This prayer realizes that there is a spiritual truth that parallels this common feeling. The coming of Christ means different things to different people. For those who are prepared for his coming, it is a cause for joy; the prayer identifies this group as those who have heeded the prophets’ warnings and forsaken their sins. Their hearts are emptied of all selfish and fearful motives, and there is room for Christ to come in and take control; Christ comes as the deepest longing of their hearts. But for those who have failed to prepare spiritually for Christ’s arrival, for those who are still clinging to selfish and evil longings, the coming of Christ is not a cause for joy but for fear. Because they have loved rather than renounced things that are not pleasing to Christ, His coming is most unwelcome, interrupting their lives.

This is part of the meaning of Advent. We are called on to spiritually prepare ourselves anew for the Christ who is always coming. As we would do in our homes before a visitor arrives, Advent asks us to clean up and prepare our hearts so that Christ’s presence in our heart will not be an unwelcome intrusion, but an occasion for joy.

Advent Devotional — Friday, December 14

12/14/2007, 8:30 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Friday, December 14, 2007
“The glory of this new Temple will surpass that of the old, says Yahweh Sabaoth, and in this place I shall give peace — Lord Sabaoth declares.” (Haggai 2:9, from the Midday Reading in The Divine Hours)

It’s hard for us to imagine the devastation the citizens of Judah must have felt. During their almost 50 years of exile in Babylon, the old men and women had kept hope alive by telling their children and grandchildren stories of their homeland. Now, finally allowed to return, there is merely rubble where the beautiful temple once stood. Their homes are all gutted or gone; their neighborhoods have become fodder for jackals and squatters; nothing is as it once had been.

Along comes Haggai, who probably registered in the public mind as something of a cruel nuisance, whipping his followers into an excited frenzy, convincing them that they could restore their home to a glory which even exceeded the glory of the past. Perhaps this was a nice notion, but common sense said it could not be achieved, at least not anytime in the near future. And there was no need to waste the efforts of young men and women on rebuilding old buildings when they needed to tend to their families and prepare for the grim new reality they all faced in their situation.

There is something of the dreamer in every faithful Christian, which is not satisfied simply by coping with “reality,” but re-imagining it completely. The Christian questions the wisdom of the world, because the world’s wisdom essentially boils down to coping as best one can with the reality that life is grim and that nothing of eternal import exists. So we tend to our retirement accounts, the things that give us pleasure, and enjoy a few fleeting moments whenever we can.

But the Christian cannot be satisfied by existing peacefully within this the grim worldview. The Christian has to look forward to the coming of the Kingdom of God, has to believe that it has started in a unique way with the coming of Jesus and will be brought in its fullness when He comes again. The Christian has to believe that the desolation we see with our eyes is not the whole story, and that life is so much more than simply coping as best we can with this reality. The Christian has to believe that the Kingdom is here and is coming. Like the faithful in Haggai’s day, we assure others that what we see is not all there is; and like them, we keep building even when it doesn’t make sense. We work on building a Kingdom that cannot yet be seen because it is that Kingdom that has given us life.

Advent Devotional — Thursday, December 13

12/13/2007, 8:30 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Thursday, December 13, 2007
“Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the winds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, he the source, the ending he
Of the things that are, that have been and that future years shall see.”
(Of the Father’s Love Begotten by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius; from the Evening Prayer in The Divine Hours)

This hymn illustrates Christ’s eternal nature: He is both Alpha and Omega; both the source and the capstone of all things in all times.

What does it say that such a One chose to take on flesh and to lay in a manger? This is the question that will confront you if you choose to face it in the next couple of weeks. We, who know all too well the limitations of the human experience, have to ask what it means that God would willingly take on those limitations. What does it mean that the Almighty decided to need diapers? What does it mean that the one who called together God’s people from the four corners of the earth suddenly had to walk like the rest of us, plodding over the soil?

Perhaps the message is this: before we follow Christ to the cross, we must follow Him to the manger. Before we, like Peter, assert our ability to follow Christ to death, we must first demonstrate our ability to follow Him into a seemingly lesser life, a life the world does not always understand. In fact, maybe our inability to follow Christ to the cross is directly related to our unwillingness to follow Him to the manger. Maybe we are incapable of following Christ to death if we have not first followed Him to a new kind of life.

Perhaps the call of the manger in our lives means willingly giving up income in order that those around us may have more. Perhaps it means moving out of a privileged neighborhood into another. Perhaps it means a call to sexual chastity, even celibacy, in a promiscuous world. Perhaps it means choosing to drive in less car than you could, live in less house than you could, and eat less food than you could. Perhaps this is what is involved with going to the manger: taking the things the world calls power and laying them aside, taking your birthright and giving it away.

Advent Devotional — Wednesday, December 12

12/12/2007, 9:00 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
“As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?”
(Psalm 42:1-2; from the Morning Psalm in The Divine Hours)

The praise chorus which was inspired by this psalm is a quiet sort of song which conjures up the pastoral scene of flowing streams and verdant meadows. Of course, to the deer, the desire for flowing streams is not a romantic longing — it is a matter of life and death. The deer needs water to survive; a self-replenishing source like a brook was life to a deer. A deer would frantically, desperately search for water just to survive, to get by. It is this image that the Psalmist uses to talk about his own thirst for God; a frantic, desperate thirst, as yet unrequited.

Advent asks us to cultivate that same thirst for God. That thirst is a difficult thing to grow. For one thing, we live in a culture that assures us God is unnecessary and quite possibly even harmful to our happiness. But for another, many Protestant churches have stressed God’s availability to us. The concept of the priesthood of all believers, for instance, has (rightly) told us that we do not need a priestly mediator to interact with God–that each of us has access to God for our own individual selves. And of course we have and treasure that access; but it is difficult to cultivate a thirst for anything that is always available — even God.

So how do we cultivate this thirst? In his providence God has given us many ways. One meaningful Advent-sort-of way is fasting, taking away the delight of a beloved food (or all food for a short period of time). When we treat that self-denial as a spiritual discipline, prayer accompanies our fasting: Lord, let me long for you in the way I’m longing for doughnuts. Our spirits are trained to desire God again; through denying ourselves smaller pleasures, we learn to associate that longing with our greater longing for God. Let me encourage you to find a way of fasting, be it through food or some other gift of God you wish to give up for a time; in it, you will learn to thirst for the living God.

Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 11

12/11/2007, 8:30 am -- by Mike | No Comments

Tuesday, December 11, 2007
“He (Zechariah) asked for a writing tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God.”
(Luke 1:63-64; from the Morning Reading in The Divine Hours)

Zechariah is one of the more fascinating characters in the Christmas story. Because he fails to immediately believe the angel’s promise of a son, he is struck mute for nine months. When his son is born, he is freed from his muteness when he agrees with the angel and his wife Elizabeth that the baby is to be named John.

We tend to think of this as a punishment, and perhaps in a sense it was. But maybe it was more for Zechariah’s sake than anything. I believe that the deepest need of Zechariah’s heart at that time was silence. Think about it: he had just seen an angel appear before him, a supernatural messenger of God before his very eyes. This angel had given him good news, and instead of receiving it with joy, Zechariah demanded a sign: “How will I know that this is so?” So an angel stood before him, and still this was not proof enough for him that this was true; he demanded something more than the appearance of a supernatural being!

As remarkable as this seems to us, it reveals something about the human condition: we are able to miss even the most obvious messages God sends to us. The noise of our world renders God’s voice inaudible. The confusion of the world makes God’s good gifts look restrictive, makes our own self-destructive paths look appealing. Of course, the antidote to this is silence. When we intentionally shut off the noise of the world, we hear the voice of God without distraction and then we become more able to hear that voice amid the world’s noise. Intentionally choosing times of silence is a key to hearing God clearly in the world.

Of course, we cannot be trusted to intentionally choose the gift of silence; neither could Zechariah be so trusted. So he had silence graciously thrust upon him. And after nine months of imposed silence, finally he was able to recognize a good gift of God when he saw it. “His name is John,” he wrote, and finally he was able to move from silence to proclaiming the good news of God.

Likely you will not have silence thrust upon you these next two weeks. But I pray that silence suffuses your very being until Christmas Day. Live as one set apart from the world; live as one who observes it. Make a conscious effort to drown out the noise of the world, so that you can hear the Incarnate Word when He is spoken. And in so doing, may God equip you to proclaim the good news of that Boy to the ends of the earth; and may God’s vision for your life be born in this time of silence.