Will This Cause Me To Be In a Hurry?

[This is one of the posts telling a story from the life of my Dad. Click here to see the others.]

I hate being in a hurry. People who've known me for some time laugh at that, because even when I perceive myself to be in a hurry, I'm still only moving at about 1/3 the speed of normal people. But still... I hate it. Hurry makes me impatient with people, mad at anything that gets in my way, and generally in a mood where I can't enjoy anything good that's right in front of me.

One of the qualities I admired most about my Dad was that I never saw him in a hurry. There were times when something had to be done quickly (for example, to avoid being kicked by the cattle), but even in those times he always had an unhurried quality about him. Just as I can't imagine what some people might be like if I was ever around them and they were really relaxed, I can't imagine what my Dad would have been like if he'd lived in a hurry.

If he had lived in a hurry, I certainly wouldn't have some of the unhurried memories with him. One morning while I was in elementary school, for some reason, it was up to him to take us to school. We got in his pickup truck, and he backed it out of the driveway, as he always did. But on this morning, to my little-boy amazement, he continued in reverse. First to the stop sign at the corner, then onto the main road... appearing that he intended to go the entire 13-mile trip to school in reverse. All the time, he was acting as if nothing at all were unusual about the situation. I can't recall with any accuracy how far we actually went in reverse before he heeded the giggling calls of, "Dad, what are you doing? Turn around!" but in my little-boy memory, it seemed like we went nearly five miles.

(Please note: Most of you can't attempt that, because you live in places like Atlanta, Dallas, or even Midland. If you ever live in a place like Spraberry, feel free.)

So, what would have happened on that morning if my Dad had the habits of many of us, which lead to hurried lives?

He would have gone about his work in a different way, which would have caused him to come home later the previous evening.

Then, we would have had supper later, if together at all, and ended up going to bed later. This would have caused him not to get up around 5:00 a.m. like he always did, which would have meant he would have had less time in the morning and perhaps been grumpy from not getting enough sleep, which would have meant my brothers and I would have gotten out of bed for school later for school that morning and been grumpy ourselves. Then we would have been rushed to get ready and out the door to make it to school in time for the first bell to ring.

There would have been a lot more "Come on, boys!" and a lot less of whatever it was that made him think that day, "Maybe I'll just drive the boys to school in reverse." A lot more impatience, and a lot less laughing. A lot more trying to make sure I didn't upset Dad, and a lot less remembering stories like this 25+ years later.

In the material for our Apprentice Groups, James Bryan Smith says some very interesting things about hurry. He claims that "hurry sickness" is the number one spiritual disease in our culture today, and that "Hurry is not part of a well-lived life." He also passes along advice that Dallas Willard once gave to John Ortberg: "Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life."

A couple of years ago, that piece of advice really troubled me. I could see myself becoming less and less like my Dad, with signs of hurry sickness setting in. As much as we'd like to try to deny it, hurry is lethal to our spiritual lives, and I was feeling its effects.

Things are quite a bit better now, since the big changes in my work roles have resulted in less hurry. I still have plenty to do, and sometimes even have to move fast (well, at least fast for me) to get some of it done, but I have the sense that I'm being much more like my Dad in the way I go about the things I do, and that's very good for me and everyone around me.

I have a good friend whose "relax gene" isn't quite as dominant as mine is, and we've had several conversations where ruthlessly eliminating hurry from our lives has come up. Yet, because he and his wife have been intentional about it, they seem to do it much better than most. I was riding in the car with them a few months ago when it came up again, and his wife said it wonderfully: Before making decisions, she asks herself, "Will doing this cause me to be in a hurry?"

Sure, we can't eliminate everything in our lives that sometimes requires us to move fast. But we can eliminate a lot of it, and my experience so far is that there is absolutely no regret in doing so.

I don't live in Spraberry these days, and driving backwards with my kids would likely result in an accident and multiple traffic tickets. But if I'm unhurried, chances are much better that my kids will have stories to tell in 25 years rather than just remembering me telling them to hurry up.

Why We've Had Our Children Baptized as Infants

Infant baptism is one of those issues that can really throw people for a loop. Often, even Christians who practice it have very little idea of why they do so and other groups don't. Those who don't can look (with a jaw-hanging-open kind of look) at those of us who do and wonder, "Why in the world would they ever do such a thing?" Those of us who do can look at those who don't and think, "Let's just make sure baptism doesn't come up in the conversation."

So, this post is not at all an attempt to try to persuade our friends who "don't" that we're right. Rather, incase it does come up in the conversation next time we're with you, it's just an attempt to keep you from feeling the need to drop your jaw open and perhaps you might even think, "They may not be like us, but they're probably not heretics."

My little girl will be baptized on Sunday at the age of seven months, very close to the same age at which our son was baptized a few years ago. This will obviously have nothing to do with anything she has done nor with any decision she has made.

Of all the potential issues surrounding baptism, I think that is both why infant baptism has come to mean so much to me and also why many others are opposed to it.

In a super-generalized way, I think almost all* Christians' views of baptism either fall on one side of that issue or the other, so I'll see if I can briefly give a bit of background on each and address a few common misconceptions.

Before I go any further, it's essential to realize that folks on either side of this can find reasonable support for their beliefs in Scripture. Neither side has thrown the Bible out the window, but rather, both sides have developed their respective practices of baptism in an attempt to be consistent with what we have read there. For the purposes of trying to keep this post to a readable length, I won't attempt to try to go into a full biblical study here. If people's comments indicate that doing so would be helpful, I can attempt it in another post.

Those Who Don't

This may sound odd from someone who has had his children baptized as infants: I really think that those who don't practice infant baptism refrain from doing so for good reasons. Because in the New Testament, we often read of people being baptized after having repented of their sin and as a symbol of leaving their old life behind to be raised to a new life in Christ, to them, baptism is primarily a means of a person declaring publicly that they too have done so.

It's a very significant thing in a person's life to come to that point. They've come to the end of reliance upon themselves, have decided to replace that with reliance upon God and his mercy offered to us through Jesus, and an important part of that is making a public declaration of the decision they have made by doing what individuals in Scriptures did.

As followers of Jesus, this is seen as one of the primary ways that we begin our life of following him, by deciding to come and be "baptized with water for the forgiveness of sins." Although Jesus was sinless, even he submitted himself to this baptism, and therefore we can imitate him by doing so once we have repented and accepted his mercy.

Common Misconceptions from Those Who Don't (Practice Infant Baptism) About Those Who Do

1. Since baptism as described above is essentially connected to a person's experience of repentance, forgiveness, and conversion, it's easy to see why baptizing an infant wouldn't make much sense to them. When they see it done and still interpret baptism through this framework, it can be inferred that the act of baptizing a baby (or anyone too young to make a decision for themselves) is meant to be a substitute for that child's need to come to that point of repentance, forgiveness, and conversion. Some even interpret this as the parents' attempt to determine the child's eternal destiny. (In conversation, this can get confused with the doctrine of Predestination, but that's a whole separate, unrelated issue.)

This couldn't be further from the reality of the beliefs behind infant baptism. As I hope to support below, when our kids are baptized, it's done as a way of recognizing God's faithfulness to them, which- we hope, pray, and strive for- will one day bring them to a point of responding to God's goodness, cooperating with God's love for and work in them, as they repent of their sin, ask for God's forgiveness, and then seek to live new lives in Christ.

Yes, in some parts of church history, there have been groups that have adopted a set of beliefs about baptism such as, "a baptized baby who dies goes to heaven and an unbaptized baby goes to hell." But just because some have done so, let's not throw out the baby with the baptism water... This has never been the majority view among those who practice infant baptism.

2. Sometimes it's assumed that the practice of baptizing infants must be something that came out of the middle ages along with a slew of other misguided Christian-disguised practices (such as paying priests for forgiveness), and that adult/believer's baptism obviously goes all the way back to the New Testament. Yet the reality is that infant baptism has been practiced as far back as we can trace in church history, while believer's baptism didn't emerge until the Anabaptists in the 16th century.

It's somewhat ironic that as heavily as the theology of the Protestant Reformation has influenced most groups who do not practice baptize infants, many of the Reformation heroes (including Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli) were strongly among those who do.

3. It's often assumed that "those who don't" are willing to re-baptize people, while "those who do" are unwilling to do so. (This is another super-generalization to which there are plenty of exceptions.) Yet the assumption isn't very accurate. Even though the Anabaptists got their name because it meant they were the ones who re-baptized people, even they disagreed with the name, since any adults they baptized had come to believe that their baptism as infants really didn't mean anything. Therefore, their baptism as adults was the first "real" baptism. Assumably, then if one backslid, that baptism also didn't mean anything and they could come again for their first real deal.

Again, this reflects how the emphasis in baptism of "those who don't" is placed on the person being baptized and the process they have been through.The emphasis for "those who do" is not on the individual and their sincere repentance, but on God, and God's grace and faithfulness. Therefore, whether I backslide after being baptized or not has nothing to say about the validity of my baptism. The only reason "those who do" would ever need to be re-baptized would be if God didn't hold up his end of the covenant and needed to start all over. Hopefully you can see why we're not eager to encourage any means that might lead someone to think that had happened...

4. Both views of this highly value following Christ's example in being baptized, but they differ in what it is about Jesus' baptism that we are to imitate.

For those who don't, it really matters that we imitate Jesus' method of Baptism: that he was an adult when he was baptized, as well as how he was baptized ("he came up out of the water" indicates that he went under, rather than just getting some water on his forehead).

For those who do, Jesus' baptism is equally a model, but the focus is more on imitating Jesus' motive for baptism.  That's not to say that the method doesn't matter, but it can't be the primary focus. The occasion for Jesus' baptism was that John was calling Israel to repent when Jesus was an adult, and therefore he couldn't/wouldn't have had any reason nor opportunity to be baptized as a child. And yes, perhaps he did go all the way under the water, but does that always have to be the case? Even if I try to imitate him by finding a river for my baptism, any rivers within driving distance of where I live certainly don't have enough water in them to cover my 6' 7" frame- even regardless of whether I'm vertical or horizontal.

So, if not the method, what was Jesus' motive? It's safe to say that he wasn't trying to make a public declaration about a process of personal repentance that he had just been through. So what was it that motivated Jesus to go into the water that day? That requires a fuller explanation about...

Those Who Do

Not surprisingly, I also think there are good reasons for having children baptized as infants, and these reasons are fundamentally different from the reasons above. (And, not surprisingly, I'll take a bit more room to explain here.) Obviously when my little girl is baptized this coming Sunday it will not be because she's gone through a sincere process of repentance. It won't be a public declaration of any decisions she has made. She isn't leaving all seven previous months of her life behind and rising to a begin again just over halfway through her first year. She hasn't accepted God's mercy toward her.

So, if her baptism isn't about all of the things that baptism precisely is to so many people, what is it about?

In short, it's about God's grace.

In not-so-short: In the Old Testament, circumcision was the sign that someone was a part of the people with whom God had made a covenant. This covenant and practice began with Abraham, to whom God had made the promise, "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Those descendants of Abraham that came through his son, Isaac, and Isaac's son, Jacob (who was later given the name Israel) became the Jewish people. Christians believe that this promise God made to Abraham meant that every ethnic group would eventually be blessed through one person who would come from the Jewish people, Jesus, the Messiah/the Christ.

Even from the time of Abraham, God began working through Abraham and his descendants, always staying faithful to his side of the covenant even in the face of their unfaithfulness. Regardless of how often Abraham's descendants turned their backs on the God of their ancestor, trusting in other gods or other things for their welfare, regardless of how immoral those descendants became, completely ignoring the laws of God that they had been given, though at times it was as if God were keeping his marital vows to a persistent harlot (as depicted in the life of the prophet Hosea), regardless of anything that happened... God kept his end of the covenant.

That covenant and all that happened through the course of God's constant faithfulness to a wavering people came to fulfillment in the life, death, and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus.

The moment during the +/- 2,000 years between Abraham and Jesus that came to mark the identity of their people more than any other was when, after being enslaved for 400 years in Egypt, they were led by God from captivity to freedom by passing through the Red Sea.

In Mark's gospel, there is no hint of a Christmas story. Rather, he begins by saying in the first verse, "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God..." Then, as quickly as verse 2, we see John the Baptist. As quickly as verse 9, Jesus is coming to be baptized. It's as if Mark is telling us that the moment that marks the coming of the Messiah, the fulfillment of God's centuries-old promise to Abraham, is when Jesus comes, along with "all the people of Jerusalem" to be baptized by John. Again, as with Moses and the Exodus, we see God's people [this time even God's Son!] passing through water. As Moses did, he too would lead them into freedom- this time from captivity to their sin.

After Jesus accomplished all that he came to do, his earliest followers quickly recognized that circumcision could no longer be the symbol of entrance into God's covenant people. It no longer had anything to do with genetic lineage or gender. The old covenant was fulfilled in Jesus. How would God's people now be identified? They would begin in the same place Mark says this act of God's work began: in the water, together with all the people following our Messiah from captivity to sin into the freedom of life in Christ.

In the years following Jesus' ascension, the old promise continued to be unveiled before the eyes of Jesus' earliest followers. People from outside the confined reaches of the old, circumcision-represented, covenant, came to be blessed by the Messiah who fulfilled it. And as they responded "they were baptized, both men and women" (Acts 8:12), Jews and Gentiles, often along with all the members of their households, which would almost certainly have included children (Acts 16:15, 16:33, 18:8, 1 Cor. 1:16).

When the Israelites passed through the water on their way out of Egypt, no one in the crowd thought it was anything of their own doing. None of them had caused the plagues nor the miracles, particularly for the sea to part for them. God, by his own action (i.e. grace), was liberating them.

When Jesus' first generation of followers passed through the water in baptism, they knew that they had not been liberated by their own doing. None of them had caused the old promises to be fulfilled in the Messiah, particularly for him to be raised from the dead. God, by his own action (i.e. grace), was liberating them.

Many Christians from that time on have had experiences similar to one I had several years ago. I was invited to preach in the church where my family attended when I was born and where I was baptized as an infant. As I stood in the pulpit that day, I looked down at the spot where I would have been baptized. I had no memory of it. I did not choose it for myself. In the +/- 30 years in between the day of my baptism and the day that I stood in that pulpit, I had often turned my back on the God of my parents and grandparents, trusted in other things to satisfy me, completely ignoring the kind of life in Christ that had been offered to me. But that morning, it hit me: Regardless of anything that happened... God kept his end of the covenant.

My baptism was in no way about anything that I had done. No repentance. No decision. It was completely about God's covenant of grace (i.e. his own action of bringing me from captivity to sin into real life in the Messiah), and about God's covenant people- my family and our church- who were promising to model God's ways for me and teach them to me.

There would come a point later in my life when I did repent. I made a decision. But even that was simply a response to how God had always been acting in my life (i.e. grace) in fidelity to the covenant that was part of my baptism as an infant.

My son's baptism was a day he will not remember, though it's one we will never forget, and we will do all we can to help him "know" that day as much as possible. My daughter's baptism will be the same. We will do what followers of Jesus have done as far back in Christian history as we know: We will go with everyone in our church, present our child as one entering into God's covenant people, all dedicate ourselves together to teaching her the ways of life in Jesus, and she will join with millions upon millions of God's people before her and go through the water. Then, when we stop afterward and reflect on it, we will be in awe that this precious little girl, completely dependent and incapable of doing anything for herself, will never, never, never be let down by God. Although it is sure that she will fail, this covenant will never have to be remade, because God will never be unfaithful to her.

The grace of the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the Father of Jesus, and of Peter, Stephen, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Asbury, Edwards... and of my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my parents, and of all of my household will never fail my little girl.

Her baptism on Sunday will be outward and visible sign to always remind us of this wondrous reality of God's grace.

* These over-generalizations don't represent all Christians. There are also some Christian groups, such as the Quakers, who do not practice water baptism at all. I also think they have good reasons, but no room for that in this post.

Renewing Our Covenant With God

I've had several experiences where something that used to seem to me like a dry, boring, old, "why in the world do we do this" practice has come to be something very meaningful for me. A prime example of that is the Wesleyan Covenant Renewal Service. I had a chance last week to help explain its history and meaning to our congregation, and particularly if you haven't yet had a chance to do something similar to set your intentions for 2012, feel free to take a look at what we did. And so that you'd have it, here's a pdf of the portion of the Covenant Renewal Service that we use in this video.

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Book Review: I Am a Follower by Leonard Sweet

I am grateful that someone has had the guts to write and publish the things said in I Am a Follower by Leonard Sweet. When I saw the title and description, I expected that Sweet would do something along the lines of what I did here, but he goes much further. The book is an unrelenting attack on the ways that the leadership culture around us has seeped into (and even taken over in some cases) our thinking about, practice of, and teaching on the gospel of Christ.

I was somewhat surprised by how strongly Sweet makes his case. He doesn't just make the much-needed point that Christians need to realize the distinction between the current leadership culture and the message of the Scriptures, but he says things like these, which will seem rather outrageous to many:

• "I hope to convince you to quit defining yourself as a leader, stop aspiring after leadership, and instead set your sights on being a 'Jesus follower'..."
• "Leadership is an alien template that we have laid on the Bible, and followership is a key not tried in any lock. Why is our culture so keen on exploring a concept that occurs rarely, if at all, in the Bible and has little to do with the categorical imperatives of the Christian faith?"
• "This is the great tragedy of the church in the last fifty years: We have changed Paul's words, 'Follow me as I follow Christ,' to 'Follow me as I lead for Christ.' Over and over we hear, 'What the church needs is more and better leaders,' or 'Training leaders is job one.' Really?... Jesus said, 'Follow me.' We heard, 'Be a leader.'"
• "What the world defines as leadership is not the way God works through his people in the world."
• "We don't need more larger-than-life leaders who conscript others into following their vision. We need more down-to-earth followers who invite others into a life that opens into one day becoming not leaders in their own right but unflappable, outflankable followers of Jesus."

While I would have been satisfied with what I expected (for Sweet to instruct us to stop presenting the development of yourself into a leader as a part of the gospel), he tells us instead that we can throw the leadership framework out the window. He makes a strong case that it is only in learning to follow Jesus that God does his work in the world, and our obsession with leading often gets in the way of that happening.

The book is divided into four main sections, plus a prologue, introduction and epilogue. In the first main section, Sweet goes straight to the heart leadership culture and our addiction to it, describing why Christians no longer need to live in it. In the remaining three sections, he describes followership as the way, the truth, and the life of following Jesus, respectively.

Anyone familiar with Sweet's writing will know his style. Honestly, I have to have a high degree of interest in the topic to get all of the way through one of his books, but when I do, he leaves his point deep within my thinking gives me things to chew on for years. He has done that again in this book.

For all of my life, I've loved being a follower and felt like I should be a leader, but my attempts to do so haven't turned out very well. Now, with Dr. Sweet's permission given in the book, I feel great freedom in saying, I am a follower.

Disclosure of Material Connection:

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

If you purchase resources linked to from this blog, I may receive an “affiliate commission.” I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Regardless of whether I receive a commission, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Book Review: The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight

The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight is perfect for you if any of the following apply:

• You've ever wanted to let the Bible become a bigger influence on your life, but then when you tried to do so, you found out that the Bible doesn't really cooperate as easily as you'd like it to in telling you what to do.
• You've ever had or liked a bumper sticker that says, "God says it, I believe it, that settles it."
• You've ever been really motivated to read through the Bible, then began and perhaps finished Genesis, but then felt utterly lost and bored by mid-Exodus, or if you were really tough- perhaps you even made it into Leviticus or Deuteronomy.
• You've ever wondered how in the world the Old Testament can actually say some of the stuff it says, like God commanding his people to wipe out other groups- including their women and children.
• You've ever wondered how in the world the New Testament can actually say some of the stuff it says, like saying it's sinful for women to braid their ha and that they will be saved through childbearing.
• You've thought that the Bible may be interesting, but felt unsure of what it's supposed to have to do with your life today.
• You either enjoy or are completely puzzled by these Scripture Plaques You Won't Find at the Christian Bookstore.

In the book, McKnight does a masterful and entertaining job of exploring what the Bible is (and what it isn't), what we should do with it (and what we shouldn't), and how we can benefit from it. By telling his own story, he gently but persuasively makes the point that even the most committed Bible-believing Christians among us don't really believe that they should do everything the Bible says they should do. (For example, I've known a lot of deeply devout Christians, but I still have yet to know anyone who has done what we get on to the rich young ruler for not doing: selling everything we own and giving the money to the poor.)

McKnight helps us to take our blinders off and realize that regardless of what we claim to believe about the Bible, all of us pick and choose from what it says. (Good thing, too, because I don't think stoning is a good punishment today for much of anything.) So, since an honest examination reveals that we do pick and choose even if we don't realize it, we need to pay very good attention to why and how we do so.

A central claim he makes is that the Bible needs to be read as Story. (By this, he doesn't mean to say story=myth, but that the whole thing follows a plot- with a beginning, middle, and end). He contrasts this way of reading the Bible to others, such as reading it as a collection of laws, a collection of blessings and promises, something onto which we can project our own ideas (like a Rohrschach inkblot), or as a giant puzzle that we have to piece together. He claims that by reading the Bible as Story, we are able to see its parts as "wiki-stories" which all contribute to the larger story that begins with humanity's union with God, continues through our separation from God, and points forward to our eventual re-union with God.

In this way, the Story of the Bible can help us to lead more discerning lives. It helps us to consider how God has worked in the past, how God may be working today, and (knowing a bit of where it's all headed) how we can align our actions with what God will be doing in the future.

So what about the blue parakeet? McKnight gives a full metaphor in the book from his bird-watching experience in his own back yard, but in short he says, "Blue parakeet passages are oddities in the Bible that we prefer to cage and silence rather than to permit into our sacred mental gardens." Passages like these (and I think most of these Scripture plaques would qualify as blue parakeets to him) should wake us up to realizing that the Bible is often not what we've thought it to be, and that it can only be what it was intended to be when we let it be what it is. (That's my own convoluted wording- not his.)

Disclosure of Material Connection: If you purchase resources linked to from this blog, I may receive an “affiliate commission.” I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Regardless of whether I receive a commission, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

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Scripture Plaques You Won't Find at the Christian Bookstore, #15

[This post is one of a series of potential Christian plaques that we would never find at a Christian bookstore. See the rest of the list here.]

Leviticus 19:18 gets quoted a lot, and for good reason. Jesus himself pointed to it when he was asked to identify the greatest commandment, and part of his response was, "love your neighbor as yourself." How different would things be if, instead of referring his hearers at the time and throughout the centuries to Leviticus 19:18, he had gone to the next verse, Leviticus 19:19:

You know, I've never paid much attention before, but I may need to do some serious cleaning out of my closet. And come to think of it, I bet that every T-shirt with Jesus' face on it is probably 100% cotton.

A Prayer for the Second Sunday of Advent (Year B)

[This is one of a series of Prayers for the Christian Year. To see the other posts, click here.]

Living, loving Father,

You forgive the iniquity of Your people, and You forgive our sin. Because we need to hear Your voice, we turn to You with all our hearts today. You speak peace to us, even when it involves calling us to repentance. So we pray, Lord, that You would clear our hearts. Heal our rough places, so that You may dwell more fully in us.

Our lives are not long, but we know that our days are in Your hands. You care for us like a loving shepherd, feeding us, gathering us in Your arms, and carrying us home.

Your patience with us is unfathomable, waiting and giving us chance after chance to repent, change our thinking and our direction, and come to You.

But do not delay the return of Your Son, our Savior, Jesus. Use us to prepare the way for His return as You used John to prepare Israel for His coming. Until that day, help us to live lives of peace, spotless and blameless, as we eagerly await the day when we will see Him, and be at home forever in His righteousness in the new heavens and the new earth.

Until that day comes, we will continue to pray in the words of Him whose sandals we are not worthy to untie, saying:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done,  on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are Yours now and for ever. Amen

Notes:

The readings for the week, on which this prayer is based, are:

• Isaiah 40:1-11: Five of the six Old Testament readings from the beginning of Advent through Christmas Day in Year B come from Isaiah.
• Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13: Part of a Psalm that describes a trust in God's deliverance, despite the appearance of current circumstances. It foreshadows the coming of the Messiah and of his messenger ("Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps").
• 2 Peter 3:8-15a: Peter points his readers' attention toward the day when judgment will come, the earth and heavens will be destroyed with fire, and new heavens and earth will be a place "where righteousness is at home." "While you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace."
• Mark 1:1-8: The gospel readings for Year B focus on Mark, and this is the second of two gospel readings in Advent come from this book. This is Mark's introduction to the entire gospel ("The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God..."), and he moves immediately into his account of John the Baptist being the one whom prophecies said would prepare the way of the Lord. John recognized that the Messiah would be more powerful than he was, who would baptize with the Holy Spirit, rather than only with water.