Second Sunday of Advent: Advent Future

As a college student, I took an elective course titled "The New Testament and the End Times." I took it because, while others appeared as if they knew exactly what the Bible said about the future, I felt thoroughly confused about it. My sense of confusion about the Bible and the future began as a teenager when, during the Gulf War, I remember feeling intrigued and overwhelmed with how people in my church and the media were tying the political events of those days to prophecies in the Bible. I can remember the evening when President Bush announced Operation Desert Storm. I went to my room, opened my Bible, and came across some verse which convinced me the world was going to come to an end that night. As you might guess, it took me a while to fall asleep. I eventually did sleep though, and woke up the next morning with the world still in existence.

I was thankful to wake up the next day and realize that the world did not come to an end that night, but that didn't stop my confusion from increasing. Christian bookstores seemed to have an ever-increasing supply of books that deepened my sense of being on the outside of those who understood. It was like there was a code in the Bible which others had a secret key to unlock, but I hadn't yet figured any of it out.

So I took the elective course in college in hopes that it would help resolve my confusion. After being given the assignments of reading several books on the subject and studying the relative passages in the Bible––I still felt throughly confused about what the Bible taught about the future. My consolation from that course was to learn that I came away convinced that things weren't spelled out in the Bible quite so directly as other people had seemed to think. The best memory I have of that semester is observing my professor, who knew the Bible thoroughly and had studied it diligently for decades, and seeing how he refused to speak to the issues with the "this is obviously what is going to happen" kind of confidence I had seen in Christian books and videos over the previous years. I didn't come out of the course with any answers, but–instead–enjoyed observing a New Testament scholar who had so many questions too.

I am attempting to make a point by describing all of this, but before I do, I'll acknowledge what may be going through some of your minds as you read this: "Why is he talking about the end of the world when these are supposed to be devotions about Christmas?" When we began last week, I described how Christian tradition teaches us that we will be better prepared for Christmas if we have the discipline to wait until it arrives, and it still isn't here yet. While the culture around us in into its Christmas season full-swing, many of Christ's people through the centuries have insisted that what we can best do during this time is to wait, because it's Advent.

Last week we considered how we can wait on God in our lives now, and this week we explore one of the main themes of Advent: we need to wait, always living ready and watchful for the day when Christ will return. Identifying that as our theme for the week may pique the interest of some of you, while for others it might create a knot in your stomach and make you want to skip this week's readings. If you'd rather read about, well––almost anything than what the Bible says about Christ's return, please hang in there with me. What I'm going to say about it is almost surely different, and better news, than what you've heard.

Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of interest in the topic, Christ's return is simultaneously one of the most confusing and most popular topics among Christians today. How are we supposed to wait readily for it when it proves so difficult to understand anything about it?

I'm going to spend the rest of the week passing along guidance which I've found to be very helpful in considering what the Bible teaches about the future, but first I'll give you fair warning: some of what I'm going to say will likely meddle with your understanding of parts of scripture. Before the week is over, we will cover ground that gives us very good news, but in order to get there, we will need to evaluate some of the things we assume the Bible says.

In addition to the practices of waiting that we covered last week, to set this week's stage for the way that Advent trains us to wait on what God has in store for our future, I invite you to join me in praying as often as you think about it the simple prayer that is the exclamation point at the end of the book of Revelation:

Come, Lord Jesus!

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A Prayer for the Day:

O God, you make us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of your Son our Lord: Give us this day such blessing through our worship of you, that the week to come may be spent in your favor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Readings for the Week*:

*Prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer and readings are from the Revised Common Lectionary.

First Saturday of Advent: Wait–Learn to Love

Whenever we get to spend the holidays with my wife's family, I always look forward to their tradition of watching what is perhaps the funniest Christmas movie ever made, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Part of the reason the movie is so funny is that we can identify with both the Griswold family's eagerness to have relatives come to their house for Christmas, and their eagerness for it to be over as soon as possible. At one point, after the extended family begins to arrive at their house, Clark says to his wife, "Well, I'm going to park the cars, and get––check the luggage, and well, I'll be outside for––the season."

The "we're glad to see them come, and we're glad to see them go" sentiment is easy to identify with. [Just to clarify for any of my own relatives who may be reading this: of course I'm speaking hypothetically here. I hear that most other families are like this, but  obviously I'm really looking forward to being with all of you–just like always. It's just unfortunate that while we're together, I'll occasionally have to be somewhere else and work on finishing up these Advent posts.]

But here's the thing that holidays with our families can teach us: regardless of how alike or dislike your family may be to the Griswolds, you aren't going to go shopping for other families to spend Christmas with this year. Just because you may have your own living version of the movie's Cousin Eddie (or just because you may be the living version of Cousin Eddie) doesn't make it likely that you're going to try to find a new family who is more fun to be with. We understand that our families are our families forever–even with all of their imperfections [again, dearest relatives, hypothetically here], they are the people who have been given to us to love.

A friend whom I admire greatly recently told me about a habit he has developed with people who cause him difficulty in life–whether they are family or not. On the surface, this will seem obvious and like it isn't anything profound, but its effects run deep. He said that, whenever there is someone who irritates him or causes him strain, he intentionally begins to pray daily for that person. He said, "you cannot help but to look at someone differently once you have been praying for them."

I am convinced that we need such simple and reliable advice in our relationships at many levels. We certainly need it in our family gatherings at this time of year. I mean–um–you probably need it in your family gatherings at this time of year. Yet there are other contexts where it is just as needed. I think that God has given us two primary circles of people who should provide the context in which we learn to love others and be loved by them: family and church.

So if you are one for whom family get-togethers during the holidays doesn't involve being around people with whom you would need to follow my friend's advice, surely your church can provide someone for you. If all of your family relationships are easy, go to church and you'll be sure to encounter someone more difficult! [Once again, dear church family–hypothetical!]

Yet how differently do we treat those two sets of relationships? Our families may annoy us, but we still get together with them year after year. However, if someone in church gets under our skin, we're likely to either seek to put them in their place or avoid them. If it's someone in our Sunday School class, we can stop attending or go find another. Or, of course, we always carry the threat in our pockets of going to find another church.

When we do so, we completely miss the point: we are in these relationships to learn to love.

So our final suggestion in laying the groundwork this week for waiting on God throughout Advent is:

  • Focus on learning to love those with whom God has already connected you–whether through family, church, or other relationships. Love them as they are without attempting to fix them or let them in on the great plan you have for their lives.
  • Take my friend's advice in regard to any of your difficult relationships by praying for that person often–before, during, and after interacting with them. (Of course, now many of us may have a whole new reaction when someone at church mentions that they're praying for us!)

The connection between learning to love and our theme this week of practices for waiting on God may not seem as obvious as some of the previous days' suggestions, but we make a costly mistake if we ever separate our personal spiritual practices from our relationships. If I pray, read the scriptures, take Communion, and spend ample time in silence and solitude, but am a selfish grouch, it's safe to say that I have not waited upon God in those practices but have only done them in ways that have allowed me to remain in control. Or from the positive angle, when we wait upon God through these practices as well as learn to love people through our ordinary relationships, we will find that the time we spend alone with God always, inevitably, has effect on our relationships.

So far in our reflections, I have tried to lay a foundation by digging into things that we can be doing to wait on God throughout Advent. For the remainder of these weeks, we will begin exploring the stories that have shaped Advent for so many Christians for so long. While this week has focused on the present aspects of Advent (how Christ comes to dwell more fully in us now) tomorrow we turn a corner and look to the future. We now have some tools that will help us to heed the Bible's call to always be ready, but what is it that we're supposed to be ready for?

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A Prayer for the Day:

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Readings for the Week*:

*Prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer and readings are from the Revised Common Lectionary.

First Friday of Advent: Wait–Quiet

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken. (Psalm 62:1-2, NRSV)

So far this week, we have considered three practical ways of waiting on God, each of which requires action on our part: prayer, reading the scripture, and receiving the Lord's Supper. Today, we'll look at another way of waiting which is related to those and enhances them. Today's way of waiting is perhaps the most radical of any of the practices I'm recommending for Advent, and will likely be the most difficult for many of us. This is ironic because this is the discipline that actually asks the least of us––rather than asking us to wait on God by requiring our action, today we'll consider how we might wait on God by our inaction.

To be precise, today I am tying together two practices for waiting on God that have been recommended for centuries by those who have waited on God before us: silence and solitude. (Don't panic, extroverts, you'll have your day tomorrow.)

Here's an interesting thing about these two practices, and for the moment we'll focus on solitude: we read about the priority it played in the lives of many people in the scripture, including Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Paul, and Jesus himself. Yet we somehow think that in our day it's a practice that's only useful for monks or contemplative-types who are particularly into "that sort of thing."

Dallas Willard describes this well:

"The life alienated from God collapses when deprived of its support from the sin-laden world. But the life in tune with God is actually nurtured by time spent alone. John the Baptist, like many of his forerunners in the prophetic line, was much alone in the deserted places of his land. Jesus constantly sought solitude from the time of his baptism up to the Garden of Gethsemane, when he even went apart from those he took there to watch with him. It is solitude and solitude alone that opens the possibility of a radical relationship to God that can withstand all external events up to and beyond death."(1)

I suspect, though, that the last sentence of the paragraph above identifies the issue for many of us: is the kind of "radical relationship with God" that would include regular practices of silence and solitude really necessary? Can't we get by fine without them?

It's possible that you're strong enough to lead the kind of life with God that enlivens your soul and blesses the world through you without practices as drastic as silence and solitude, but I certainly am not. I wither without them. I readily admit that part of the reason for that has to do with my personality, and that these practices are perhaps more necessary for people as introverted as I am than for most people, but I think the issue goes deeper than our personality preferences.

Here's my theory: as a generalization, we have stopped using the lives of Jesus and the great ones of his way as our practical standard for how we can live our lives. We look at them, admire them, think about the ideas they talked about, and usually begin to use some of those ideas in our conversations, but we rarely consider the obvious option of taking on their lifestyle–seeking to do the kinds of things they did in order to become the kinds of people they were. So, when it comes to Jesus and Paul, or more recent figures such as John Wesley or even people we have known and loved, we tend to admire them, but we treat them as oddities–eccentric people who had been zapped by God with special abilities to go to such great lengths.

Particularly in the case of Jesus, treating him like that may be a form of admiration, but it isn't a form of trust. It's a way of keeping our lives at a distance from his, a way of associating ourselves with Jesus without giving him control, a way of avoiding waiting on God like Jesus did.

Willard again:

"Our modern religious context assures us that such drastic action as we see in Jesus and Paul [in their use of practices such as solitude] is not necessary for our Christianity––may not even be useful, may even be harmful....Both the secular and the religious setting in which we live today is almost irresistibly biased toward an interpretation of these passages that condones a life more like that of decent people around us than like the life of Paul and his Lord. We talk about leading a different kind of life, but we also have ready explanations for not being really different. And with those explanations we have talked our way out of the very practices that alone would enable us to be citizens of another world."(2)

Because these practices are so radical for us, it's wise to approach them in an experimental manor (not to mention that it's wise to approach them at all!). Something that is true of all spiritual practices–which particularly comes into play with silence and solitude–is that we need a long-term view of them since our practice of them is more about the way that they shape us over months, years, and decades of engaging them more than it is about practicing it on one day and then wondering whether we got anything out of it or not. Remember–after all–this is about waiting on God and allowing him to work how he wants, when he wants, whether we even end up being aware of it or not.

So here are the simple, but very challenging, suggestions for waiting on God this Advent through silence and solitude:

  • Silence: Waste five minutes per day with God, accomplishing absolutely nothing. You aren't studying the Bible nor going through a prayer list, but just being quiet and seeking to increase your awareness that God is with you. You can go on a walk or drink a cup of coffee, but do something with your body that will remind the rest of you that you're spending this time with God. (In other words, doing laundry or paying bills probably wouldn't help.) Your mind will become distracted, but don't let that concern you. That's more of a bother to you than it is to God.
  • Solitude: Option A: Semi-Radical: Take advantage of the "little solitudes" that are already in your normal days. In other words, when you find yourself alone and able to choose what to do, don't waste the opportunity by turning on the TV immediately or checking Facebook one more time. Leave the radio off in the car while you're driving, or take whatever opportunities present themselves to enjoy being alone with God in the course of your normal days. Option B: More Radical: Take a full day sometime between now and Christmas to be alone with God. I've written up some brief guidelines for how to do so here.

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A Prayer for the Day:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Readings for the Week*:

*Prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer and readings are from the Revised Common Lectionary. (1) Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, (New York: HarperCollins, 1988) 101. (2) Ibid. 107-108.

First Thursday of Advent: Wait–Eat and Drink

Thirdly. All who desire an increase of the grace of God are to wait for it in partaking of the Lord's Supper. – John Wesley

I am not a pastor (though I did engage in brief experiment with having the title a few years ago), but I do enjoy spending a good bit of my time and energies helping pastors in different ways and accompanying them in their very difficult work. One of those ways which I enjoy most is when I have the opportunity to assist a pastor in serving Holy Communion.

When I am one of the people who gets to help distribute the bread and juice to others as together we all seek to take in the body and blood of Christ, I get a different view on what is happening. I get to see more faces, more hands, and more eyes of the people participating alongside me as we take part in this ancient form of following our Messiah. I've seen all kinds of things when I'm on that side of the Lord's Supper.

Some of the things I've seen haven't been pretty. Once, when Communion was being served in the method that pastors call "intinction" (when people are given a piece of bread to dip into juice and then eat), I saw a woman realize that she had begun to eat her bread before the arrival of the cup. Then, in one of those war movie-like ultra-slow motion moments which I was too far away to stop it, she took the bread back out of her mouth and dipped it in the cup while the pastor was already looking ahead at the next person. Lesson learned: I will always watch the person I'm serving, and–if need be–assure them that Jesus doesn't mind if they did things out of order and that another piece of bread is available.

Thankfully, seeing those kinds of things has been extremely rare. Much more often, I see things that aren't particularly important in any way, but just interesting observations. Some people like to fold up their piece of the body of Christ while others prefer it fluffy. Some people chew the bread slowly and others pop it as if it were medicine. When the juice is distributed in small cups for each individual, some people like to wait with their bread until they also have their juice in hand. Then, of course, there are those who look very comfortable with such a small glass and almost attack it, throwing their head back like it's a shot glass.

And even more thankfully, more often than those things, I get to see things that remind me of the holiness of the moment: like when I see an elderly man hobble to the front with his cane but still insist on kneeling to take Communion; or when I see a line of people waiting for the Lord's Supper which includes people from across every distinction that gets drawn in the world around us–men and women, different races, young and old, educated and uneducated, rich and poor–each coming to Jesus' table together.  Some people's faces express pain, others' joy. Some people's hands are rough and mature, others' are soft with the large majority of what they will touch in life yet to be done. Some people's eyes are young and reveal that they can't possibly fully grasp the significance of what they're about to do with that bread and juice, other people's are old and also reveal that they can't possibly fully grasp the significance of what they're about to do with that bread and juice. There are many distinctions, but we're all there together, each and every one of us as equally undeserving of the invitation as everyone else.

When we receive that bread and juice, we–in the most physical, concrete way possible–are inviting Jesus Christ to come into the deepest places of who we are. Or, I guess it would be better to say that we're accepting his invitation to be a place where he comes to dwell. Either way, it's worth doing, and worth doing at every opportunity.

I hope that you have the opportunity to receive the Lord's Supper during Advent, because it's one of the best ways we have to wait on him. We do it repeatedly throughout the course of our lives because as he makes his home ever more fully in us, there is always another room in the houses of our souls that he hasn't yet occupied.

But there's another angle to this, which blows my mind: Waiting on God by taking the Lord's Supper during Advent is especially appropriate because, as we'll explore next week, one of the themes of Advent is the reminder to live in a constant state of readiness for Jesus' return. We await the new heavens and new earth when all of the dead will rise to new life and God will finally and fully set everything right–forever–with the One reigning at the center of all of it who said, "Do this in remembrance of me."

The Bible tells us precious little about what will happen then, but it repeatedly compares that day to a banquet. To my memory, Jesus only mentioned one thing that he would do with us, after that day when what has happened to him in his resurrection will happen to us and to all of creation–when everything is made new: "I tell you, from this moment I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it in a new way in My Father’s kingdom with you."(1)

The words Jesus said to his disciples just before that are the same words we hear each time we're invited to partake: "Take, eat. This is my body...Drink from this cup, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant..." In other words, here's the mind-blowing part: We will receive Jesus' supper again with him in the future, when all things are made new, and every time we receive it in the present is an advance participation in what, one day, we will do together again with him.

So we eat, we drink, and we wait–in remembrance of him.

The Advent suggestion for this practice is simple: receive the Lord's Supper at every opportunity you're given.

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A Prayer for the Day:

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Readings for the Week*:

*Prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer and readings are from the Revised Common Lectionary. (1) Matthew 26:26-29

First Wednesday of Advent: Wait–Read

Secondly. All who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in searching the Scriptures. - John Wesley

My first suggestion, which I made yesterday, on how to wait for God throughout Advent was through prayer. That probably didn't come as a surprise to anyone, and today's suggestion of reading the scripture is also unlikely to rock anyone's boat. "Pray and read the Bible" are the standard answers most of us have heard throughout our lives for how to seek God. Yet, as we consider these practices in the context of waiting on God, we might realize that we can do them in ways that either enable us to wait (by relinquishing the tight grip of control we like to attempt to maintain on our own lives) or that work against our skills in waiting (by making us hold on more tightly).

This dynamic may be easier to see when we consider the ways that we pray. Like we discussed yesterday, we often either pray out of a sincere desire to be in God's will, and at other times we pray out of a sincere desire for him to be in ours. Could it be that this issue of who is in control also affects the ways that we read the Bible?

I hope that at some point in your life you will follow one of the many plans available that gives you a schedule for reading through the Bible in a certain period of time. There are plans that take a year, while some take up to three years or even as short as ninety days. A huge benefit of following these plans is that by doing so we get an increased awareness of the overarching story of God's work in human history that takes place throughout the entire Bible.

My wife and I were following one of these plans a few years ago, and we both benefitted from doing so. However, she made an observation about reading that Bible that way that stood out to me: she said that there were repeated times when she was reading a passage and something stood out to her which made her want to spend more time in that passage and go further into its meaning, but she couldn't do so because she needed to keep up with the reading plan rather than taking any more time with the passage and falling behind. This points to something that can be a disadvantage in our normal ways of reading the Bible: they help us get a better grasp of the information that's there, but they often leave us in control of what happens between us and God through the Bible (or even relegate that control to "the plan") rather than increasing our ability to actually hear from God through the scriptures. Dallas Willard points out the tension when he says that our goal in reading the scriptures is not to get us all of the way through the Bible, but to get the Bible all of the way through us.

New Testament scholar Robert Mulholland gives us a powerful image for thinking about how we might come to the scriptures in a way that helps us to wait on God through them. In looking at a passage from Hebrews 4, which describes the word of God as "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart," The next verse describes what should be our posture before the word of God: "before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account."(1)

Mulholland explains that the term translated as "laid bare" is the same word that would have been used for an animal about to have its throat cut to be sacrificed, or for the defeated gladiator laid across the knee of the victor with throat exposed before the death blow. So, according to this, it might help get the point across to us if–the next time any of us read the Bible–we do so with our heads laid back and throat exposed, insisting that God, through the scriptures, can have his way with us.

How comfortable does that make you feel? I don't know about you, but if I think of reading the Bible during Advent, I tend to think of things like angels, stars, and happily expectant mothers. That's a far cry from what many of the Advent readings actually are and how we might go about reading them in a "giving myself over to God in a throat-exposed" kind of way.

In light of this, I'd like to suggest a way of reading the scripture for the remainder of Advent. From today through the rest of the series, I will list a set of four readings at the bottom of each day's post. These are the traditional Advent readings for each respective week from the Revised Common Lectionary. Here's what I suggest:

  • Read the four passages at least once each day during the week. This act of reading passages repeatedly points us in the direction of waiting on God through the scriptures. Whereas normally we shy away from re-reading anything we've read before in favor of moving on, reading this way can open us up to the Bible differently.
  • Notice your reaction to at least one of the readings. By reading repeatedly, you will likely have some kind of a reaction to at least one of the passages. You may be surprised by it, it may cause some kind of longing in you, or perhaps you find yourself being resistant to–or even disliking–something that one of the passages says. Pay attention to this as you read the passages each day.
  • Sometime near the end of the week, spend five to ten minutes asking God what it is about that passage that connects with your life. It's fine if you don't have any significant insights while doing so (remember–we're attempting to wait on God and give him the control rather than keeping it for ourselves), but it's likely that sometime during Advent, the Lord will lead you. It may be in obvious ways, or it may be in more subtle changes in your thinking, but waiting on God through the scriptures in this way will take its long-term effect on us.

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A Prayer for the Day:

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought us in safety to this new day: Preserve us with your mighty power, that we may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Readings for the Week*:

*Prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer and readings are from the Revised Common Lectionary. (1) Hebrews 4:12-13, NRSV

First Tuesday of Advent: Wait–Pray

First, all who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the way of prayer. - John Wesley

I've noticed something about prayer over the past few years: sometimes we pray because we sincerely want to be in God's will, and at other times we pray because we sincerely want God to be in ours. I've done my share of each of these. There have been times when I have prayed with the deepest intention of being open to God and becoming more completely his. This isn't limited to praying about things going on in my own life, but can certainly include times when I pray for others. Though it isn't always the way we go about it, we can pray for others in a way that holds them before God, asking for his kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth in their lives, just as it is in heaven. Whether for myself or for others, the times when I have prayed in these ways could be described as seeking "God's will: nothing more, nothing less, nothing else."(1)

Then, of course, there have been plenty of other times when my praying has boiled down to trying really hard to convince God to give me something that I wanted (usually followed for a while by a lack of praying, because the request I had been making didn't come according to my terms). During these times, Richard Foster's words describe my prayer precisely: "Our needs, our wants, our concerns dominate our prayer experience. Our prayers are shot through with plenty of pride, conceit, vanity, pretentiousness, haughtiness, and general all-around egocentricity."(2)

I've heard people say that there is no bad way to pray, and generally I agree. So, despite how the previous paragraphs may appear, I do not mean to communicate that one of these kinds of prayer is good and the other one bad. Foster's point in describing the selfishness of our prayers is that we should lay them out before God without regard to their level of egocentricity, considering that we cannot go around selfish prayer, but that we must go through it in order to lay aside our own wills in favor of God's.

However, in light of the issue we discussed yesterday (that we don't like to wait, because we don't like to give up control), it's important for us to realize that while there may be no bad way to pray, some ways of praying are more helpful than others–particularly when it comes to how our aversion to waiting on God drives us to resist giving control to him. While we should indeed feel free to come to God honestly with our concerns without feeling any need to censor them, if we want to cultivate our ability to wait on God, we will need some practices that help us to intentionally surrender the illusion that we have total control over our lives and instead entrust ourselves to God and his kingdom.

For the remainder of this week, we will look at different practical ways that we can wait on God throughout the rest of Advent. While it may seem counter-intuitive to talk about waiting on God as doing things, much of Christian tradition insists on the wisdom of this approach. Waiting on God requires our intentional cooperation, and it's inevitable that if we don't decide now on some ways we will deliberately wait on God between now and Christmas, we will arrive on December 25th with souls prepared (or ill-prepared) to the same degree as they have been in the past.

So, for today's suggestion of how we might wait on God this Advent through prayer, I pass on a helpful approach from James Bryan Smith's great book, The Good and Beautiful Life, and you might want to try this at least once per week throughout the remainder of Advent(3):

  • Set aside ten to fifteen minutes.
  • Think about all of the things you might be anxious about.
  • Write them down in your journal or a notebook.
  • Ask what you can do to remedy each of these situations.
  • Make a note to yourself to do the things you can do.
  • Turn everything else over to God.
  • Write your request to God, and be specific.

Much of the point of waiting on God through these kinds of practices is that doing them helps put our lives into contact with God's kingdom. When we pray in this way, we can realize that our actions do not need to be done in our own strength, but that the things that have been worrying us are no threats whatsoever to God's kingdom, and therefore we too can safely entrust ourselves to him.

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A Prayer for the Day:

O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom: Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

*From The Book of Common Prayer (1) Danny E. Morris and Charles M. Olsen, Discerning God's Will Together: A Spiritual Practice for the Church (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1997) Kindle Edition, Location 1273. (2) Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) 9. (3) James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2009) 183-184.

First Monday of Advent: Why Waiting Isn't One of My Specialties

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. (Psalm 130:5-6, NIV)

Suggesting that Advent is about waiting––that it is a period of time for us to recognize the ways that the people of God have waited on God through the centuries, and for us to follow their lead and wait on God ourselves––is likely to raise our defenses in some ways. In conversation with others, I have never heard anyone respond to a question about what kind of things they like to do with an answer along the lines of, "One of my favorite hobbies is just...waiting on things." We view waiting as an interruption into our plans of how things should go. Our attitude toward waiting reminds me of a comment from my son when he was about three years old. He was playing with some toys in his room when I asked him to help me clean up some of the clothes he had scattered around on his floor. Without looking up from his toys, he said, "Sorry, that's not one of my specialties."

It's easy for us to react that way when we talk about waiting on God. Better to leave that kind of thing to the professionals, we think. Then, throw into the mix that this series of Advent devotionals has waiting as its theme, and I would be surprised if some of us have not already subconsciously decided that we may keep reading, but probably won't actually do anything that gets suggested as a way of waiting on God. Ruth Haley Barton observes, "Most of us are not very good at waiting. We want what we want, and we want it yesterday. We want it on our own terms, just like we envisioned it....When there is something we need, having to wait for it puts us in a position where we are not in control....This is a necessary and yet very humbling aspect of ordinary life and of the spiritual life."(1)

I think there's also another reason why none of us is eager to develop waiting as one of our specialties: when we talk about waiting on God, we may initially nod our heads in agreement while at the same time only having a hazy idea of how anyone might attempt it. We wonder, what exactly is it that we're supposed to do?

Fortunately, there is a specific, practical answer to that question, and we will spend the remainder of this week exploring it. My hope is that doing so will give each of us a concrete idea of how we could go about waiting on God, and hopefully even make a plan to do so for the rest of Advent. We'll get into some specifics over the next few days, but for now, this question might point us in a helpful direction:

If I were to shape the next twenty-four hours of my life in a way that fosters my love for God and for other people, what would I do?

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A Prayer for the Day:

O God, the King eternal, whose light divides the day from the night and turns the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep your law, and guide our feet into the way of peace; that, having done your will with cheerfulness while it was day, we may, when night comes, rejoice to give you thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

*From The Book of Common Prayer (1) Ruth Haley Barton, 2013 Advent Reflections.