Oh, what innocence 

Sleeping in a manger under dreamless skies

See the newborn King

Trading every glory for a silent night

Here is the promise we have waited for

He will not leave us in the dark

He will bear our weight, He will wear our shame

Come, lift Him high

Behold, the Savior

Jesus Christ, law of love and light

Come, lift Him high

Behold, the Savior

Veiled deity

Praise of every angel, shepherds bowing low

Sweet humility

Mercy as a baby, God in flesh and bone

Here is the promise we have waited for

He will not leave us in the dark

He will bear our weight, He will wear our shame

Come, lift Him high

Behold, the Savior

Jesus Christ, law of love and light

Come, life Him high

Behold the Savior

Here is the promise we have waited for

He will not leave us in the dark

He is the promise we have waited for

The cry of every searching heart

The fourth candle on the Advent wreath traditionally represents Love.  Love is the reason the Son of God took on our skin and bone, our weakness, our sorrow, and our distance from the Father. The Light of the World stepped down into darkness. He had nothing to gain from leaving his throne. The cost-benefit analysis comes up short on every human scale. He lost everything.

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”

His love tipped the scales in our favor. He found in us a treasure worth dying for. What a Savior!

Love incarnate, Love divine. Star and angels gave the sign

Bow to babe on bended knee, the Savior of humanity

Unto us a Child is born. He shall reign forevermore.

Son of God and Son of Man, there before the world began

Born to suffer, born to save, born to raise us from the grave

Christ the everlasting Lord – He shall reign forevermore.

Noel, Noel – Come and see what God has done!

Noel, Noel – the story of amazing love!

The Light of the world, given for us, Noel

 

The third candle of the Advent wreath represents JOY.

Earlier this week as I scrolled through Instagram I came upon a post that made me pause.  There, with a brilliant background, was the word CONSOLATION in fancy script.

The caption went on to speak of Jesus as our consolation. It’s stayed with me for several days.

My first reaction was one of disdain. The only relationship I have with the word “consolation” is one of a consolation prize.  The word conjures up images of silver medals, smaller trophies, a few bucks when you could have had thousands, the title “First Loser”.  With this framework, considering Jesus as my consolation doesn’t invoke joy.  Instead I am reminded of disappointments…of “almosts”…of “maybe next time”….of “someday.”

Praise God my feelings and experiences do not reveal Truth. Luke 2 tells us the real story.

  “Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.  And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”

And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him.”

Simeon spent his days in the temple, waiting for the promised Messiah. Over the years the coming king had become known as the “Consolation of Israel” – the one coming to comfort and console a city and people in ruin. He saw the baby and knew the True Consolation – the only One able to console – was here, and he was filled with joy.

The word consolation should never be associated with second place. It means comfort, to console one who is in deep sorrow. The consolation God promised through the prophets was so much greater than an encouraging word or a hug.

The Greek word used in Luke 2 is parakaleo, which comes from the same root used in paracletus, which was used as a name for a Holy Spirit – the advocate, one who consoles, comforter, helper.

Isaiah 40:1-2, 10-11  “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins….Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.  He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

Isaiah 66: 10-14

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
    all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
    all you who mourn over her;
¹¹ that you may nurse and be satisfied
    from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
    from her glorious abundance.”

¹² For thus says the Lord:
“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,
    and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream;
and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip,
    and bounced upon her knees.
¹³ As one whom his mother comforts,
    so I will comfort you;
    you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
¹⁴ You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;
    your bones shall flourish like the grass;
and the hand of the Lord shall be known to his servants,
    and he shall show his indignation against his enemies.

Here is the truth of the matter.  Our consolation rounds, our losers’ brackets, our consolation prizes – none of them bring consolation. They may lessen the sting of loss for a while, but in the end, they do not comfort. There is no vindication for the loss and we mourn.

Our True Consolation has come. He made comfort possible through His life, death, and resurrection. His Spirit remains with us to comfort, console, and remind us of the consolation to come.  One day our ultimate consolation will be fully consummated and we will no longer want for anything.  There will no longer be loss.  There will be no reason to mourn.  We will be fully and finally comforted.

Dostoevsky described this moment beautifully in The Brothers Karamazov. “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the important and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men.”

He is our consolation and our prize. There can be no greater comfort or joy.

Tonight’s Playlist:Joy to the World/The King is Coming (Christy Nockels); Welcome to our World (Chris Rice); He Shall Reign Forevermore (Chris Tomlin); All is Well (Point of Grace); Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus (Chris Tomlin/Christy Nockels);  Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne (Nancy Leigh Demoss)

Tonight we light two candles. Many churches use the first to represent hope and the second for peace. Two things which I have very little of tonight, if I am being honest.

I hate that I feel this way because I just had a beautiful weekend. My sister got married yesterday. It’s been a week of great joy…and hope and peace. But it’s also been a weak of difficult news (all first world problems that probably shouldn’t have me this upset) which my melancholic, overly emotional self just can’t deal with right now. I sit here tonight exhausted, teary-eyed and feeling defeated.

Christ’s birth reminds us that we do have a great Hope. The promised Prince of Peace stepped down into our broken, weary, bad news-laden world. I think we forget how much political strife, human rights violations, unrest and bad news existed in the time and place into which He arrived. Israel – God’s beloved and chosen people – was subject to a government that did not share her values. Herod, fearing they would rise against him, ordered all boys under two years old be killed. The good news of old is more than enough for today’s trouble, my friends.

But let us be careful that we do not let “good news of great joy” become good luck and mild happiness. The bad news is even worse than the surface level troubles of the day to day. Our world is broken. It’s falling apart. Yes, it shouldn’t be that way, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s going to just “get better” because we’re loved by God and therefore worthy of good things happening to us. Whether they do or not happen our hope is unchanged. The promise holds true.

My current difficulties may reach a happy conclusion but that is not the hope for which He came. Life is hard, and according to what I read in the Bible I think it it going to get a lot worse before it gets unfathomably better.

Our Hope and foundation for Peace, however, is that this world will one day become unfathomably better because of the great work that babe in a manger would one day accomplish. “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

Revelation 21: 1-4 – Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Tonight’s Playlist: Advent Hymn (Christy Nockels), He Has Come for Us (Meredith Andrews), We Shall Always Be With The Lord (Ellie Holcomb), Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken (Indelible Grace Music), From the Depths of Woe (Indelible Grace Music)

Today is the first Sunday of Advent in more traditional churches. Although I don’t attend a church that observes this four week period with much more than a shout-out in the welcome, I’m trying to use this time to prepare my own heart. Throughout this liturgical season I will pop in from time to time and share what I’m learning.

So what is Advent? It’s a foreign idea to many, I am sure. In the United States, we just start decorating with greens, reds and golds, throw in some reindeer and an old guy in a red suit and somehow come up with a month-long festival known as Christmas. The word advent is derived from a Latin word that means “coming.” It is closely connected with the Greek word parousia, which means “presence, arrival, or official visit.” The season of Advent, then, is a time of preparation. The King is coming. We must get ready so we can welcome Him in a worthy manner.

During these four weeks we remember and prepare for His coming – we share in the ancient longing for the Messiah to arrive in Bethlehem, we welcome Him into our hearts daily, and look alertly and with great hope for the day He returns in glory. We stay awake, we keep vigil, we pray and wait for Jesus, the only son of the Father, whose birth we celebrate. We long for His arrival. We keep watch in the night.

So this year, I left most of my “Christmas” decorations in their boxes. My tree is up but only decorated with purple and white…ready for a King, but not yet celebrating.

Tonight, I light a single purple candle and read God’s promise in Ezekiel 34: “Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land…I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak…And they shall know that I am the Lord their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Lord God. And you are my sheep, human sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares the Lord God.”

Let every heart prepare Him room!

 

I will probably never post twice in a day again but women, you need to go read this now: Jesus is Not Your Cheerleader.

I just finished Jen Wilkin’s latest book, None Like Him: 10 Ways God is Different From Us (and why that’s a good thing). It is a short read but packed with truth. Here’s an excerpt from the book about Psalm 139 – I’d never read it this way.

“Without question, the subject of Psalm 139 is not us. It is God.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.

He searches, knows, discerns — omniscient.

He is behind and before –eternal.

He is beyond human reckoning — incomprehensible. 

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee form your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost pasts of the sea, even there you hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

He is near and far, high and low — omnipresent.

His right hand sustains — self-sufficient.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were forms for me, when as yet there was none of them.

He creates life — self-existent.

He does wondrous works — omnipotent.

He ordains each day — sovereign.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.

He is immeasurable — infinite.

He endures — immutable.

Omniscient, eternal, incomprehensible, omnipresent, self-sufficient, self-existent, omnipotent, sovereign, infinite, immutable. No, Psalm 139 is not a psalm about me, fearfully and wonderfully made. It is a psalm about my Maker, fearful and wonderful.

It is a psalm intended to inspire awe.”

Let us love and sing and wonder…

I’ve been slowly working my way through The Cost of Discipleship and just wanted to share some of Bonhoeffer’s words here.

“The path of discipleship is narrow, and it is fatally easy to miss one’s way and stray from the path, even after years of discipleship.  And it’s hard t find. On either side of the narrow path deep chasms yawn. To be called to a life of extraordinary quality, to live up to it, and yet to be unconscious of it is indeed a narrow way. To confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, and at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with the infinite love of Jesus Christ, is indeed a narrow way. To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and at the same time face our enemies unarmed and defenceless, preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way. To see the weakness and wrong in others, and at the same time refrain from judging them; to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed a narrow way. The way is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it. If we regard this way as one we follow in obedience to an external command, if we are afraid of ourselves all the time, it is indeed an impossible way. But if we behold Jesus Christ, going on before step by step, we shall not go astray. But if we worry about the dangers that beset us, if we gaze at the road instead of at him who goes before, we are already straying from the path. For his is himself the way, the narrow way and the strait gate. He, and he alone, is our journey’s end.” (p.190-191)