Today is the second day of Advent, Day Two of our Jesse Tree journey. I have never done a Jesse tree before, but this year I want to make Christ the center of the season, for myself and for the family. So each evening we read our Jesse Tree devotional to see how Christmas started all the way in the beginning. Day one tells of God's creation, the act of great love that breathed us into the world. Day two is (already) our rejection of Him. We turned our backs to Him, inviting in the destruction, desolation and despair our pride would bring. Yet He pursued us with His love, driving us into a world that would drive us back to Him, clothing our nakedness and protecting us from the Garden which would now destroy us, and most of all promising us a Savior.
God, let me believe. This world is so weary of waiting. It is bitter and cynical and alone and afraid. It lashes out at You while claiming not to believe in You, because believing hurts too much and raises too many questions. Where were You when…? Where are You now? Why don’t You come? Why don’t You come?
And yet You did come long ago to a tiny manger in a tiny town. You made Yourself tiny among us and clothed Your God-glory in flesh that we might bear it. It was enough then, and it is still enough. We long for vengeance; You showed us forgiveness. We long for justice; You showed us mercy. We long to see our enemies punished; You showed us love. We long for all of this pain and suffering and loss and rejection and hopelessness to disappear; You took it all to the cross and transformed it into hope. You did not pull us out of the pit but plunged into it with us, and if we will but learn from You, we will find You in the midst of the mess.
This I want to believe. To know that those who have suffered most will drink most deeply from Your well. To understand that the ruined and broken people of the world can find peace and joy and rest in this place, right now, in Your love. To see the light that entered the world so long ago burning warm and fierce, healing our hopeless, battered hearts.
You used a manger to cradle Your glory. A band of fishermen to spread Your story. A teenage girl to hold all our hopes inside her pregnant belly. A rough wooden cross to bear the weight of Your sacrifice. We keep looking for fireworks from heaven while you keep making miracles of everyday things, quietly filling us—US—with the hope the world hungers for. Or we would be filled if we would let You open us raw and wide and hurting and afraid; if we would give You that and let You use it. But in our fear and pride and loneliness we shrink down into smallness, hovering over our hurts instead of letting them be bread broken for You. We don’t listen. We don’t come. Because we don’t believe.
If we did, we would be crying it out to all the world that our hope is here, among us, as the shepherds did on Your birthday, as the angels did on Your resurrection day, as the true few have done every day since.
Help me believe. Enough to give myself to You. Enough to give up everything else. Enough to proclaim You with all my might.
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