G. Archer Frierson
Austin Seminary Board of Trustees
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Advent Devotional for December 17
• Matthew 24:32-44
Advent is a paradox: We look back in order to look forward. Paradoxes are often uncomfortable, but we must not resolve this one. Our hope depends on it. If we look back without looking forward, our hope degenerates into nostalgia: our future is equated with recreating our past. If we look forward without looking back, our hope evaporates into fantasy. We pursue our daydreams instead of God’s will.
If our hope is to have a foundation, we must look back: back past the Reformers, back past the first disciples, back past the prophets and the kings and the patriarchs, all the way back to our first parents and their first sin. We must look back to Eve and Adam, caught naked in the garden, hearing their condemnation. Then, in the midst of their shame, they heard God’s words to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15).
This is known as the “protevangelium”: the first proclamation of the Gospel. God did not leave our parents without hope. They took this Gospel out into the world. They passed it on to their children. The Israelites carried it into Egypt and back. They kept it alive through prosperity and famine, through peacetime and war, through enslavement and freedom, exile and return. They saw its fulfillment in the son of Mary, the second Eve and the second Adam, whose words to us remain: “I will return, but the time is unknown. So be ready.”
“He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” The serpent will not have the last word. The children of Eve and Adam will know more than good and evil. They will know peace and joy. That is the promise. That is the hope in which hope we wait.
Reverend Dr. David W. Johnson
Associate Professor of Church History and Christian Spirituality
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.We hope that you are preparing the way for the Lord in your life as you read these meditations and prayers. And, we hope this Advent season is a meaningful one for you. Please know that Austin Seminary’s dedicated, diverse, and loving community of faith is not complete without you. Did you know?
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