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Advent Devotional for December 4
• Isaiah 64:1-9
I often wish God would show up in more obvious ways. If God would make a couple of Bible-style appearances, maybe our spiritual journeys would be less hit-or-miss.
It would be great to receive instructions through a sky-full of stars, a burning bush, or an angel named Gabriel. We would know, more clearly, what it is we are to do and who it is we are to be. Also: if God put Godself “out there,” everyone would see that what we believe is true. We wouldn’t have to work so hard, in a world full of natural disasters and sin-driven violence, trying to convince others that God is somehow around.
Tear open the heavens and come down, O God! Light the kindling under the fire! Do something awesome that no one is expecting! Please, God—we need you to come through for us.
Isaiah wonders, as we do, if God’s seeming absence has something to do with sin. But here’s the twist, if you look at v. 5b, Isaiah suggests God has pulled back from us because of our sin, but also that we sin because God has pulled back. “Because you hid yourself we transgressed,” the NRSV translates.
Well. It seems pretty audacious of Isaiah to insist God take some responsibility for the world’s sufferings. And he continues in this vein, trying to persuade God to step up, regardless of our sin. God is the one who forms us, after all. We, the clay, can only be lumps apart from the attention of the Potter.
At Christmas, God will respond to Isaiah’s request. God will come, again, in a very particular, definitive, way. The mountains won’t quake, but a baby will cry. Adversaries won’t change, but shepherds will come, amazed. And wise ones will somehow pick the one star to follow out of an entire sky-full. God’s awesome deeds will heal the world in ways we hadn’t thought to ask for and would never expect.
Awesome God, help us to discern your presence new again this Advent. Act in unexpected ways that invite us to righteousness. Amen.
Cynthia L. Rigby
The W.C. Brown Professor of Theology
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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