Prayer

Unexpected God,

your advent alarms us.

wake us from drowsy worship,

from the sleep that neglects love,

and the sedative of misdirected frenzy.

awaken us now to your coming

and bend our angers into your peace.  Amen

Scripture

Isaiah 30:19-22

 For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. ²⁰ And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. ²¹ And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. ²² Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!”

Meditation

In the inbetween, the now and not yet, we can place our trust in many things.  They might not ve overlaid with silver and gold but we still have a propensity to produce idols. We desire to have something tangible to hold on to when times get rough.  We desire to have active eyes to see how good we are doing in keeping up appearances. Our idols can be approval, power, pleasure, comfort, etc.  This list goes on and on and at the bottom of it all when we remove the silver and gold plating we come to ourselves.  Our greedy little fleshy hearts and the desire to be the one in the centre of it all manifest itself in the things, attitudes, and positioning we strive for.

How we long for the day when we will no longer see them as the most important pursuit.  God, through Christ, calls out to us the Way. He is the Way.  We walk in Him.  Our life is in Him.  It sounds easy but in the inbetween, the now and not yet, we now that it is not easy to say to our idols, “Be Gone!”  Christ hedges us in with His righteousness.   He keeps us from turning toward the left and the right.  He is the Way.