Advent, A Coming, An Arrival

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers, welcome and thank you for joining us. We are doing well despite the subzero temps which are a little early even for Minnesota. Joy is back to full production mode with her Bundles of Love projects after things slowed during their holiday craft show. She has quite the rhythm going each week crafting quilts, burp clothes, sweaters, hats, mittens, and booties. Multiples of each, each week! I am also pleased to see her exploring things she had made personally before the accident, which stretches her mind as she re-engages with more aspects of her creative pursuits. And, she continues to enjoy her knitting/crochet groups in our building and at our church. At home, we finished our Christmas decorating, finding new places for old favorites and in the process continue to be thrilled with our move and our new home.

This week, as I considered what to share, I was struck with several different passages from our week’s Bible reading that were especially encouraging to me and which I hope can be encouraging to you as well. However, they only loosely fit together, so I apologize ahead of time if this collection of thoughts feels somewhat disjointed. My hope is that they can still each offer a degree of encouragement in their own right. So here we go…

Last Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent, a term that means, “a coming” or “an arrival” and which represents the anticipation both of Jesus' first coming in the Nativity at Christmas and his promised second coming at the end of time. For most of us, I would imagine, our thoughts of the Christmas Nativity story come from the gospel accounts in Matthew and Luke or from Isaiah’s prophesies like, ”the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” or "to us a child is born... Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” But in our Bible reading this week, which included the apostle John’s epistles, I saw John proclaiming his own version of the “advent,” “a coming,” an “arrival," even though he was speaking of Jesus as an adult. While John certainly proclaims that "the Word became flesh" in his gospel, this passionate pronouncement in his epistle touched me in a new way this week. Here are John’s words from “The Message” paraphrase:

From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy! 1 Jn 1:1-4 Msg

Next, and this is only tied to the Christmas story by the messenger, Gabriel, but it touched on one of my favorite themes and so I wanted to share it with you. While we are not told that it is Gabriel who speaks to Joseph in the gospel of Matthew, he is named in Luke as he tells Mary of her future role as the mother of Jesus. In our Old Testament reading this week we were in Daniel and Gabriel brings a personal message to him, which, by the way, would have been about 600 years before his visit to Mary. Gabriel comes to inform Daniel of the following:

“Daniel, I have come here to give you insight and understanding. The moment you began praying, a command was given. And now I am here to tell you what it was, for you are very precious to God…” “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “for you are very precious to God. Peace! Be encouraged! Be strong!” Dan 9:23, 10:11

Twice in his message to Daniel, Gabriel stresses that he is “precious” to God, twice! This is the theme that means so much to me. We all know that God is love and that he loves each of us. But love is a big term and there are many forms of love. We can deeply appreciate being loved by God and being the recipients of his love, but that can sometimes be hard to grasp or relate to. However, for me, “precious,” is not hard to grasp, being precious to someone truly moves my heart. While I do my best to love my wife, children, grandsons, friends and others, I know that only Joy, my children, grandsons, and closest friends are precious to me. In Isaiah 43 we read:

"When you go through deep waters,

I will be with you.

When you go through rivers of difficulty,

you will not drown.

When you walk through the fire of oppression,

you will not be burned up;

the flames will not consume you…

because you are precious to me.

You are honored, and I love you.

Knowing that God considers me precious actually means more to me than the fact that he loves me. Being loved is so important, being held as precious, to me, is more wonderful still.

See what I mean about disjointed?

Well finally, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share one of the all time most comforting and encouraging Psalms we read this week and so I will close my disjointed thoughts with this as our prayer, wish, and hope for you…

I look up to the mountains—

does my help come from there?

My help comes from the LORD,

who made heaven and earth!

He will not let you stumble;

the one who watches over you will not slumber…

The LORD himself watches over you!

The LORD stands beside you as your protective shade.

The sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon at night.

The LORD keeps you from all harm

and watches over your life.

The LORD keeps watch over you as you come and go,

both now and forever. Ps 121:1-8