Advent is very important to me and I make every effort, despite the time of year, to slow myself down and reflect on what this time really means. So many of us – me included – occasionally refer to this time as the ‘silly season’. It’s a bit sad really that the time of celebrating God’s divine intervention into history is so often an occasion of great stress and turmoil.
It is a regular frustration to me that the one time of the year when our Christian presence might really have an impact among others, we actually abandon our post and simply join the crowd rushing madly around complaining about how little time and money we have and how much we have to do.
One of the Bible readings that I will be looking at on Sunday is Isaiah 2:1-5:
‘The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
In days to come the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many people shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths .”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.’
Isaiah didn’t write this when all was well with him and his nation. Indeed they were in exile and things probably could not have been worse. The prophet Isaiah – as is the role of a true prophet – was not ruled by what the eye could see or what his mind might tell him; he was ruled by what he felt God was saying and showing to him. We can learn a lot from Isaiah.
What if we as the people of God in our local communities determined to do what Isaiah suggests in the last part of the above reading? We have just come through a time when people have been offering us a whole bunch of ways forward; what if we chose God’s? What if we chose – against all the odds – to ‘walk in the light of the Lord’? Christmas is supposed to be a time of hope. What if we chose to walk in that hope? It is also supposed to be about peace, joy and love. What if we made a conscious decision this Advent and Christmas to not only light Advent candles and flip through Advent calendars; but make real the promises of God by bringing these things into view through our own lives of worship, witness and service? What if we as a local church committed to offering these things to each other and to others? Come; let us walk in the light of the Lord.
It is a personal theory of mine; but if you are reading this and have already decided that you are too busy for it; you’re right – you are too busy!
Today I was given a lesson in theology by a pre-schooler. Some months ago the families pet dog died and for whatever reason he had been pondering on this and was missing his little mate. He decided that he wanted to give his pet something to play with in heaven. When he suggested that he wanted to give a ball his dad thought that perhaps God already some balls in heaven already; but our little friend had worked out that they were probably hard ones and his pup needed a soft ball. On arrival at Playgroup I was handed a white plastic golf ball with a simple enough request; ‘Pastor John, could you give this ball to God and ask him to give it to my little dog?’
From another part of Isaiah: ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.’
It’s hardly surprising that Jesus calls us to become like little children.
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