Advent 2
Devotional
Water From the Rock
Lectionary Devotional for Cycle C
Object:
See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.
-- Malachi 3:1
Advent is a season of promise. We read scriptures that reveal the promises of God even as we prepare to recognize their fulfillment in the birth of Christ. Contemporary Christians are often more comfortable thinking of the entire season as a past event. Once upon a time God made a promise to send a messiah and then, over 2,000 years ago, God fulfilled that promise. So today we can feel good that God was faithful, and we can celebrate the results of that faithfulness in the Christmas season. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable to consider the possibility that we, too, should be anticipating the coming of God. We tend to dismiss such thinking as belonging to a more extreme version of Christianity.
We live as if we were reading a mystery novel but have already peeked at the last chapter and so do not expect any surprises. Yet there is both a past and a future dimension to the Christian faith. It is not only that God came in Jesus but also that God will come again. Our discomfort in such thinking may have a basis in an awareness that the coming of God into our presence would have its negative side as well. "But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?"
Advent, as a time of preparation, may be an opportunity to reflect on what needs to be purified in each of us and in our church so that we are ready to receive God. Such purification may begin with the pastors and church leaders. "For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness." If we were to take the words of the prophet as a word to us during this Advent season, what type of purifying action would we each want to take in our own lives?
-- Malachi 3:1
Advent is a season of promise. We read scriptures that reveal the promises of God even as we prepare to recognize their fulfillment in the birth of Christ. Contemporary Christians are often more comfortable thinking of the entire season as a past event. Once upon a time God made a promise to send a messiah and then, over 2,000 years ago, God fulfilled that promise. So today we can feel good that God was faithful, and we can celebrate the results of that faithfulness in the Christmas season. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable to consider the possibility that we, too, should be anticipating the coming of God. We tend to dismiss such thinking as belonging to a more extreme version of Christianity.
We live as if we were reading a mystery novel but have already peeked at the last chapter and so do not expect any surprises. Yet there is both a past and a future dimension to the Christian faith. It is not only that God came in Jesus but also that God will come again. Our discomfort in such thinking may have a basis in an awareness that the coming of God into our presence would have its negative side as well. "But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?"
Advent, as a time of preparation, may be an opportunity to reflect on what needs to be purified in each of us and in our church so that we are ready to receive God. Such purification may begin with the pastors and church leaders. "For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness." If we were to take the words of the prophet as a word to us during this Advent season, what type of purifying action would we each want to take in our own lives?
