Advent Devotional for December 5

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Advent Devotional for Sunday, December 5

Isaiah 11:1-9

In that day.” So much to look forward to, but “that day” seems so far away, a misty dream, the stuff of fantasy and fiction. What of that day works in this day?

A difficulty here is the sheer vastness of the image, a canvas that runs well outside our field of view. This is the messiah that we are reading about, not we ourselves. And yet. Are we not also participants in the messianic project? Does this spirit, perhaps in diminutive form, not also rest upon our shoulders? If so, then our assignment is to exercise a wee bit of judgment and a teaspoon of power, and then that same Spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, clothes us if we are paying attention.

One phrase, “the fear of the Lord,” is a characteristic both of the Spirit and of our delight. It is what is given to us and what we give. Perhaps we do not so much judge and decide, be wise and knowledgeable, as simply live in the fear of the Lord, and whatever comes forth from that rhythm of living is judgment and wisdom enough. How could it be anything else?

So the trick is the fear of the Lord, something that cannot be reduced to righteousness or even faithfulness, both of which are our own. The fear of the Lord can never be owned. Its grandeur forbids any possession. It is, as Heschel writes, our “blush in the presence of God.”

O God, beyond all imagination, before whom our minds and hearts falter and stutter, guide us into the silence of minutes and spaces between, in which we can remember that which we do not know, some enormity of goodness that reminds us that these times in which we live, though of great import to us in this moment, are passing and small in your moments. May we never forget to be undone in your presence. Amen.

Whit Bodman
Associate Professor of Comparative Religion

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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.