Advent

An Advent Plea Day 6

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“Oh, come, our Dayspring from on high,
And cheer us by your drawing nigh,
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who have been touched by death’s dark shadows, both near and far, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have seen loved ones get sick, grow old and frail, and pass away, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who know death isn’t natural or right, that it isn’t the original plan, but a product of the sin of Adam and Eve, come to us Emmanuel.

For us, who long to see broken bodies made whole, sickness healed, feeble minds grow strong, blind eyes given sight, lame made to walk, and the dead raised to new life, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come to us who long for perfect healing that can only come from You. Come to us who long for the day when we shall never grow old or mourn anymore or have to say goodbyes to those we love. You who are our peace and comfort now in days of loss and sorrow will be our joy and triumph in the days of restoration and joy yet to come.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

An Advent Plea Day 5

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“Oh, come, O Key of David, come,
And open wide our heav’nly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who often lose our way in a world that is pulling us in every direction except the one You call us to walk in, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who are so easily distracted by any and every little thing and so often forget You and Your promise to guide and keep us safe, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who are so prone to giving up and sitting on the side of the road in self-pity and despair, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who need one more reminder of Your goodness, one more sign of Your faithfulness, and one more rememberance of Your saving deeds of the past, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come to us who are weary and heavy-laden and be our Rest. Come to us who grow weary and faint and renew us to rise up as eagles. Come to us who lose the way and lose our true selves amid the cacophony of voices telling us who we should be and what we should do and where we should go and be our Way Home.

Be our Wisdom, our Courage, our Purpose, our Direction, our Promise, our Strength, our Joy, and our Salvation Song.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

An Advent Plea Day 4

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“Oh, come O Rod of Jesse’s stem,
From ev’ry foe deliver them
That trust your mighty pow’r to save;
Bring them in vict’ry through the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who have listened to our fears and doubts yet again when we should have listened to You, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who trusted in friends and family who are just as frail and human and we are when we should have trusted in You and You alone, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have felt abandoned and alone in our greatest hour of need, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who failed to see You in the person who spoke encouragement to us or gave us a helping hand or comfort, come to us, Emmauel.

For us who fear too much the grave and do not fear the One who overcame the grave (for a reverent fear of You is the beginning of wisdom), come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who too easily forget that You have already won the victory and overcome any foe we will ever face and that Your victory is our victory, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come to our fears and transform them into faith by your perfect love. Come to our doubts and transform them into wonder and awe by Your steadfast love and faithfulness. Come to our needs and be the God who is enough.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

An Advent Plea Day 3

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“Oh, come, oh, come, our Lord of might,
Who to your tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times gave holy law,
In cloud and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who are weak and frail, come to us, Emmanuel, in Your power and might.

For us who keep making promises that we fail to keep and vows that we never fulfill, come to us, Emmanuel, who fulfilled both Your end and our end of the Law.

For us who struggle through bad days where everything goes wrong and nothing goes as planned, where it is all we can do to survive through the next moment, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have come to realize that we will never change or break old habits or start new godly ones without Your indwelling Life lived inside us, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who have a path littered with little golden calves and homemade idols of power, success, fame, popularity and all the other gods we’ve tried to replace you with, come to us, Emmanuel.

We who stumble in the dark need Your Light. We who are drowning in a sea of voices all around us that confuse us and cause us to lose our own identity need to hear Your still small voice that can silence all the other voices and remind us of our true selves, who we are in You. Only You can bid the chaotic waves in our hearts and minds be still and bring peace to our inner world.

Come, Lord Jesus, come to us.

An Advent Plea Day 2

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“Oh, come, our Wisdom from on high,
Who ordered all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who have lost our way again and again and need once more to be taught the way in which we should walk, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who feel crowded and bombarded by all the voices telling us a myriad of different things, telling us who they think we are and who they think we should be, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who lack wisdom and understanding, who often feel more like victims than victors, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who just need to hear once more the Voice that says good things about us and calls us Beloved and can drown out all the other voices with a whisper, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come be our Wisdom. Come be our Strength. Come be our Confidence and Security. Come show us the way to go and guide us in it, for You Yourself are the way. Come reveal truth to us, for You Yourself are the truth. Come and make our lives full and abundant and overflowing, for You Yourself are the life. Our life.

Come, Jesus, Come.

An Advent Plea Day 1

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“O, come, O, come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!”

For us who are exiles from Home and wander through the wilderness of our shame and guilt, please come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who live in the land of Now-And-Not-Yet, where both Good Friday and Easter Sunday co-exist and joys and sorrows meet in a beautifully broken mess, come to us, Emmanuel.

For us who long to escape the trials and tribulations and temptations of the world we live in, who no longer are captive to the shallow philosphies of life around us, who yearn to see with our eyes the Promise fulfilled completely, come to us, Emmanuel.

Come, Lord Jesus, into our brokenness and make it whole. Come into our darkness and bring Your light. Come into our weariness and bring the fresh strength of eagles in flight.

Come, rescue us from ourselves and our weaknesses. Be our joy, our peace, our strength and our song through these evil days. Walk beside us through all our troubles and carry us when we can no longer walk. Sing to us in the valley of the deepest darkest shadows that we may hear Your voice and find our way through.

Come, O come, Emmanuel. God for us. God with us. God in us. Come.

Nothing is Impossible

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Do you really believe that nothing is impossible with God? I for one pay lip-service to the idea, but usually in my day-to-day life, I don’t believe it. In fact, many times my life says exactly the opposite.

 But this is the same God who caused Elizabeth to be pregnant in the geriatric ward. The same God who brought forth the Savior of the World from a penniless 13-year old virgin.

Don’t you realize that you yourself are living proof that nothing is impossible with this God?

Weren’t you once dead in sin and shame but are now alive to God and everything good in this life?

Weren’t you a stranger to God, to everyone else, and especially to yourself, but now you belong in a forever family with God as your Abba Father and Beloved as your new name?

Weren’t you without a hope in the world and headed for a dead-end destination but now you’re future is secure and the promises of God toward you as true as the God who made them?

Didn’t you at one point have nothing to offer anyone but now you are a living testimony of God’s grace and His very hands and feet to the world?

You are more than your net worth. You are more than your social status or your marital status or your assets.

You are proof that absolutely nothing is too hard for God. That what seems impossible to us is ridiculously easy for God.

You are living proof that no one is beyond hope of redemption, that no one is too broken to be made whole or too used to be made a new creation or too unloveable to be made beautiful.

Just remember that when someone else tells you you’re a nobody. Remember that when you are far down on someone else’s list of priorities.

Jesus thought you were worth dying for. And you are the evidence that the impossible became reality and the unthinkable happened.

Because nothing– not one thing– has ever, is, or will ever be impossible for this God who saved you. Period.

More Glorious Impossibilities

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First of all, yay for vacations. And boo for places that don’t have free wi-fi. Hence, the lack of blogging the last 4 days.

I did read an Advent devotional that pretty much rocked my world. It’s from a fantastic little book called The Christ of Christmas by Calvin Miller. It’s a 31-day devotional that covers the month of December. I shamelessly urge you to go out and buy it today.

The devotional I read centered on Elizabeth, who was geriatric and pregnant, and Mary, who was a virgin and pregnant. Two opposite ends of the spectrum, yet still recipients of the miraculous. The glorious impossible.

Like when you were once dead in sin and to every thing that really mattered in life, including God, but now you are gloriously more alive than you’ve ever been and awake to all the riches God has for you. Glorious impossibilities.

Like when you were stamped with failure and disaster, but God stamped you with His own signature, making you priceless, and called you BELOVED. Glorious impossibilities.

Or when you were a stranger and alone and had no one who understood you or your pain, but God has given you a forever family who walks with you through every possible joy or trial, where your joys are multiplied and your sorrows divided (my kind of math). Glorious impossibilities.

Like where the King of the Universe whom creation and everything in it could not possibly contain coming down as a tiny fetus into the womb of a 13-year old. This same God who knows your name, who saw your face in your darkest moment of weakness when even you couldn’t love yourself, and loved you and thought you were worth dying for.

Glorious impossibilities. The kind that you will see every day of your life if you keep your eyes open to all that God is up to in and around you. The kind that He will accomplish through you if you just give Him the tiniest bit of room to work and offer to Him the frailest of agreements.

The kind that made the Christmas season a reality.

Lights in the Dark

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“Everything was created through him;
      nothing—not one thing!—
      came into being without him.
   What came into existence was Life,
      and the Life was Light to live by.
   The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
      the darkness couldn’t put it out” (John 1:4-5)

In a sermon I heard today, I was reminded about the difference between light and dark. Darkness is nothing but the absence of light. It has no inherent power of its own.

All the darkness in the world flees away before the power of one single candle. You never heard of darkness putting out a light before, did you?

The only reason the world is in darkness and people can’t find their way and families are adrift is that the lights aren’t shining. Too many people have lit their candles and stuck them under baskets out of fear or conformity or shame.

The only way that people around you can see their way clearly to God is if you shine. That’s what stars do, after all. They don’t fire cannons or raise banners or sing anthems. They just shine.

We are stars in a dark world. When we shine, we reflect the glory of God and show people what He looks like. If we don’t shine, how will anyone be able to know how good this God is or how strong He is to save?

You may not be able to preach a sermon or recite an entire chapter out of the Bible. You may not be able to lead worship or create artistic masterpieces. But there’s one thing you can do as well as anyone else.

You can shine.

No one can tell the story of what God has done in your life better than you can. No one can walk beside someone who’s going through the same tragedies and heartbreaks and obstacles that you went through as well as you can.

Remember that Advent is all about the coming of the Light of the world. All the powers of hell couldn’t overcome Him and the world has never been the same since.

I pray that you will simply reflect the glorious beautiful Love that Jesus shines on you to others. May you be a beacon of hope to those trying to find their way Home.

I pray you shine!

Stopping the Parade

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Some moments are so precious and rare that they stop you in your tracks. Some are so beautiful that they become engrained in your mind the same way an image is burned on to a strip of film.

Today, as I wached the Christmas parade in downtown Franklin, I noticed a man standing with his arms around a little boy who had Down’s syndrome. I watched how loving the man was toward the boy and assumed he was the boy’s father.

At one point, an older man stopped the parade, got out of his car, walked over to the boy, and handed him a stuffed toy dog. I think that image will be forever in my memory.

At one time, we were all in a parade like that. Slowly marching through history, trying anything and everything to fill the deep aching inside. None of the flashing lights or sounds could fil the void or fix the brokenness inside.

Then God stopped the parade. He entered human history in a hidden corner of the world in a lowly barn to a peasant couple in backwoods Bethlehem. God became one of us to find us and rescue us from our sins and ourselves.

That man, Jesus, lived a life we could never hope to live and satisfied the requirements of God that we never could. He climbed up a hill and died a criminal’s death that should have been yours and mine and rose from the grave, leaving all our sin and brokenness and fear of death behind in the grave.

Where were you when God stopped your parade? Where were you when Jesus entered into your history and became something more than a historical figure or religious icon? Where were you when Jesus saved you?

I know at the end there will be a different kind of parade. We will all be in it, along with every saint who ever lived and followed Jesus. It will be a triumphant parade with songs of victory and shouts of joy. Jesus will be the grand marshall and this parade will never end.

I hope during this frantic Christmas season, Jesus will stop your parade and speak peace over you in the few moments of stillness. I pray He will remind you that it’s His birthday we’re celebrating and what He wants more than anything is your heart surrendered and you being a vessel that He can love and reach and heal people through.