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Advent Devotional for Sunday, November 30
Isaiah 64:1-9
“We are all withering like leaves, and our iniquities, like wind, carry us off.”
These words from the prophet Isaiah remind us just what is at stake in the season of Advent. Light breaks into our darkness. Death is conquered by life. The world is in a mess, and so are we. Our most existential fear is voiced by the prophet: “And can we be saved?” God’s answer is born again in our heart, our home, and Christ’s church.
Advent may be one of the most counter-cultural things that we Christians do. For the prophetic word comes to remind us that the values of this world are not God’s values. And that we are too much of this world. Meanwhile, Santa Claus rides in at the end of the Thanksgiving Day parade, distorting our deepest longing with endless distraction. Oh, how we need our Savior. This need can never be fulfilled by the manufactured array of wants and needs soon to bombard us.
My adult daughter’s greatest pet peeve is the playing of Christmas carols on the radio and in stores before Christmas. If she can, she snaps the offending source off. I imagine that her response was formed long ago, as a wiggling Christmas angel, back in the congregation where I served as pastor. The Christmas pageant bristled with the Holy Family, wiggling angels, mischievous shepherds, and stalwart kings. It invariably ended with a special entry: a young teen would come down the center aisle with a crown of tinsel and a heavy wooden cross on his back, reciting the words of a poem: “Christmas leads to Easter.” Together, with some sense of sorrow, and the weight of our iniquities, we’d accept again the gift of God’s wondrous love, and finally sing: Joy to the World!
Welcome to the journey of Advent.
Eternal God: Advent is that season of life when we rouse ourselves to cling to you. No matter how much or many we have lost, Advent is our time to begin again with you, our living God, who does wonders we dare not even hope for. We ask—in our self-disgust, despair, depression, and grief—“Can we be saved?” Now we wait, longing for the angel’s promise: with God, all things are possible. Amen.
Rose Niles
Development Officer
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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