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Advent Devotional for Wednesday, December 1
We are so inundated in images of buff, sexy, desirable — photogenic — people that it is hard to imagine being jolted by an ancient Jewish prophet’s imagery of animals in estrus. Yet Jeremiah’s camel interlacing her tracks, and the wild she-ass in heat, are disturbing images that capture hot-blooded, underlying lust, driving out any thought other than the obsession at hand. With that awareness of unmanageable compulsion, Jeremiah confronts our attempts to take charge—to depend on gods of our own making.
And we do seek our security in institutions, nations, and corporations we have constructed so elaborately that they seem to take on a life of their own. The ongoing global economic trauma from collapsed financial institutions; ecological catastrophes of climate change and runaway oil wells; and the crescendo of escalating warfare linked to terrorists, drug cartels, and marginalized states—all stem from a dance of competing desires, gone unmanageable.
“But where are your gods that you made for yourself?” Jeremiah challenges. “Let them come, if they can save you, in your time of trouble.”
Jesus knew us well. His twofold instruction was to love God “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And “like it,” to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
That concise expression of how we may move toward God’s dream for creation asks a lot more than obedience. It demands that we live in a present awareness of hope outweighing our compulsion to go to any lengths to ensure that our desires are met, and to accept that outcomes besides those of our own intent can be good.
Loving God, help me to live in hope of possibilities beyond my imagining, so that my compulsions do not lead me to gods of my own design. Amen.
Doug Fritzsche
Senior MDiv student from Albuquerque, New Mexico
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
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