Advent Week 1: Hope

Advent Week 1: Hope

Hope. We are in dire need of hope this year. As we are still in the clutches of a pandemic, we need a hope to grab hold of. We feel hopeless when we can't see an end of our negative situation, like when we are experiencing an international pandemic. For this week's Scripture, let's take a look at what Paul had to say to the Romans about hope.

Scripture: Romans 8:18-27

Hope is used seven times in these ten verses. If we zero in on verses 24 & 25, it has six of those seven hopes. Do you have a hope like Paul's? When faced with suffering, can you say that "our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us"? Creation hopes to "be liberated from its bondage to decay" as it wants to be "brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God". Creation has been groaning right up until now. We groan too as we "wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies". (24) "For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? (25) But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." We aren't hoping for something that we already have. We are patiently hoping for something that we do not have. Furthermore, "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans." The Spirit searches our hearts and knows the mind of God, as it intercedes for us "in accordance with the will of God".

We have experienced suffering this year. Many of us know someone who has suffered from the virus, or even died as a result of it. This isn't something that we can make go away by "looking on the bright side" or "just pushing through it". Yet, even in the midst of suffering, pain, and lament, we can still hold fast to hope. We can recall God's character and remember how He has been faithful throughout our lives and more specifically in the past year. We can mourn and lament the brokenness of the world, even as we cling to the hope God offers.

Song: O Come Divine Messiah. 

This site has a recording and the lyrics, as well as a bit of the history of this song.

As the song states, we are waiting for hope to be triumphant. We are waiting for sadness to take off and leave. We are waiting for Christ to return. We are waiting for fetters to be broken. We are waiting for the lost to be redeemed. People back then were waiting for a conquering king to challenge Rome, but Jesus came in peace, meekness, and poverty. 

Many of us have experienced deep sadness this year, whether from the mounting number of infections and the rising death toll, or due to so many black deaths this year, or from a loss of normalcy. Yet, in the midst of all this, Advent calls us to hope. Perhaps this year, more than "normal" years, we can better resonate with the author of Lamentations (traditionally attributed to Jeremiah), because our world has been devastated this year. We normally like to rush to the hopeful message of Lamentations 3:21-24, but this is much to explore in the rest of Lamentations 3 if we sit with Mourning.

As we wait (more on waiting next week), we also hope to win the day. We hope for the end of things that cause sadness. We hope for the captives to be freed and the lost to be redeemed. Let us not just focus on a hope for us or those we love, but let us also hope for deliverance for the oppressed and let us work towards that hope. 

Questions to Consider:

-How can we work towards restoration, redemption, and reconciliation in our world today?

-How can the choices we make help captives to be freed? What can we do to help former captives recover and thrive?

-Are we sharing this hope with the world? Are we peaceful and meek, even when someone tells us "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"? (because snarling back "IT'S MERRY CHRISTMAS" really doesn't illustrate that love that we claim to have as Christians)

Challenge: 

Take time to ponder this week: "What are you hoping for?" Go deeper than a Christmas wish list. What brokenness in our world breaks your heart? What steps can you take to carry hope to hopeless people? Ask yourself "What am I doing to work towards that hope?" If you are hoping for racial reconciliation, what are you doing to participate in addressing this wrong? If you are hoping for captives to be freed, what you doing to support organizations fighting modern-day slavery and supporting former prisoners so that they can successfully reintegrate into society? If you are hoping for people to come to faith in Christ, what are you doing to remember to faithfully pray for them and share the Good News? 

The angel visits Mary

Advent Introduced

This year has already been drastically different, so it seemed fitting that we should try something new for the Advent and Christmas seasons.

I am wanting to celebrate a simplified Christmas this year. Less travelling, less trappings, less non-religious traditions. I am also wanting to celebrate a more meaningful Christmas. More reflection, more generosity, more worship.

So I hope that we can travel through this Advent season together. May this be a year where we are free from the busyness that normally plagues us and open to a simple, more meaningful celebration. 8 years ago, I did an Advent series, so it seemed good to revisit ways to celebrate Advent in a non-typical year.

There is a fluidity to Advent. Different churches assign different meanings to the candles and shift their Scripture readings accordingly. For this Advent season, I will be choosing the themes from among the traditional set that seem to best fit for this year and selecting my own Scriptures for these devotionals. There are plenty of resources that will convey the traditional Advent and Christmas readings and Scriptures, so this series will be a little non-traditional.

Each week will have a Scripture, a devotional thought by yours truly, and an Advent song. It is surprisingly difficult to find Advent songs. We have plenty of Christmas songs celebrating the birth of Jesus and the announcements reaching the shepherds, magi, and others, but we have a smaller collection of songs about the longing, anticipation, and waiting of Advent. 

I challenge us to slowly decorate throughout Advent for Christmas. One of my favorite traditions is a "progressive nativity". As Advent progresses, more people come out until finally on Christmas Eve, Jesus is placed in the manger. 

Our culture isn't fond of waiting; many people bow at the altar of quick, convenient, and cheap. To choose to wait is to reject the lure of immediate gratification. We can reclaim religious Christmas traditions from the highly commercialized and secularized influences by taking the season of Advent to rest, reflect, and wait.

The animals are in the fields/stable

Letting Our Faith Change Our Culture

I am of the mindset that we need to constantly be on the lookout for ways that our culture has influenced our faith. If we aren't watchful, we may discover that our culture has colored how we apply our faith, when our faith is supposed to be changing our culture.

This is rather difficult to do, because our culture seems normal to us since we have been raised this way to value certain things and act certain ways.

One thing that is fairly prevalent in Christian circles is the mindset that we can, and in fact should, specialize in areas of Christianity.

Our culture focuses on our strengths, our talents, and our preferences, so we end up with the mindset in the Church that we should apply this to our faith as well.

That's fine and dandy, except this is not what the Bible teaches.

We aren't commanded to choose one thing that God cares about & just care or focus on that thing.

As followers of God and imitators of Christ, we should be studying Scripture to figure out what God has shown us that He cares about and then we should work on caring about those things as well. Then we need to do something about it, because if we just care about something emotionally or intellectually, but don't do anything to improve or protect it, well the Bible questions if we really care all that much after all. 

Now I know these are a lot of claims that I have made, but this post is the culmination of reading through the New Testament in a small group & making several connections about what the Bible says about our gifts/talents and our actions.

Truth 1: God gives different gifts to different people.
See Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, and 1 Peter 4.

Truth 2: All Christians are still called to live out specific actions, even if it's not my "strength".
A lot of times, we see in Scripture, general commands to believers such as "teach & admonish one another" or "encourage one another" or "offer hospitality without grumbling". These are commands to all believers, because they don't have qualifiers like "if this is your gift". There is a clear expectation that we are supposed to work on all of these "one another" instructions in addition to other clear commands in the Bible.
See the "one another" instructions in these passages: Romans 12-16, 2 Corinthians 13, Galatians 5, Ephesians 4-5, Philippians 2, Colossians 3, 1 Thessalonians 4-5, Hebrews 3, Hebrews 10, Hebrews 13, James 4-5, 1 Peter 1, 1 Peter 3-5, and all of 1/2/3 John.

Truth 3: The Bible clearly & repeatedly calls for Christians to do all good works to reach all people, not just the things I'm good at for the people like me.
See what the Bible has to say about "good work" in these passages:  2 Corinthians 9, Ephesians 2, Colossians 1, and 2 Timothy 2-3. Do you note the "all" or "every" or "any" in these passages?
See Matthew 28, Mark 16, Romans 10, 1 Corinthians 9, 1 Corinthians 5, 2 Timothy, and 1 Peter 3 for passages on spreading the Gospel.

At the heart of all of these conflicting messages from our faith and our culture comes one core question: Am I allowing myself to be shaped in Christ's image? Okay two questions: Am I learning to act like Him, even if it means that I have to practice traits I'm not as good at?

So instead of asking "Am I good at this virtue?", we need to ask ourselves "Did Christ model or command this virtue of us?"

There is one quote from our culture that we can learn from. We often hear the first half, but rarely hear the full quote:  “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." It is better for me to continually work on and practice hospitality, patience, encouragement, serving those on the margins of society, & generosity, than just focus on one or two strengths or spiritual gifts. I won't fully look like Christ as long as I continue to specialize in some virtues, while laughingly dismissing other virtues as "not my gifting".

To imitate Christ, I can't just focus on my strengths & practice those virtues. It's certainly a good place to start, but it's not where we should stay long-term. I need to practice especially those traits & disciplines that I struggle with, that I find myself lacking. It is only by working on my weaknesses in addition to my strengths that I can get closer to displaying His likeness each day.

Choose to Believe the Best

When you go through life and you observe someone's actions or words, do you automatically presume the best or worst about them?

If someone cuts you off in traffic, are they in a hurry due to an emergency or a jerk of a driver?
If someone steals something from your store, did they accidentally forget to pay (and maybe will return to remedy the error when you're not there) or did they maliciously take the item?

Far too often, we, as Christians, are quick to assume the best about our actions, flaws, and sins, and equally quick to presume the worst about other people's actions and grave sins.

Yet if we don't know the motivation and thoughts behind the actions we observe, why shouldn't we presume the best about others until we are proven wrong? Why is the default for so many Christians to presume the worst about others when we don't know their story or their ending?

Yes, I realize that most rude drivers probably aren't trying to get their spouse to the doctor ASAP, but if that keeps resentment, complaining, and bitterness out of my life and heart, why shouldn't I believe that? I won't encounter them again most likely to learn why they were driving so poorly.

My husband and I had two unique experiences with workers in other countries that highlight how we have intentionally chosen to believe the best about others, even when we realize that we are probably being overly-gracious in our interpretations.

The first encounter we had was in 2013 with the self-proclaimed "Cheap Miguel". We were on a cruise with my family and at one of our stops, we were looking around a market, trying to find maracas to purchase. Cheap Miguel drew us into his shop and had exactly what we were looking for. We were short on time, so we gladly parted with $20 for a set of maracas. We blithely walked on to meet our tour guide, only to encounter another vendor selling those identical maracas for $2.
We were...how do you say...swindled. We were frustrated at Cheap Miguel and soon recognized that if we didn't change our response, we would soon allow an ungodly root of bitterness to grow in our hearts. So we looked at our encounter with eyes tuned to grace and compassion.

Miguel might have had a family. Maybe even a large family. Someone in his family could have been sick. He could have felt torn by his desire to keep vigil at their bedside, but he also recognized his responsibility to earn money for the medical bills. So he sold souvenirs and trinkets to cruise ship tourists. He could have been frustrated by tourists trying to haggle him down on prices to save a buck, when he needed that money to buy medicine for his sick family member. He knew that he was selling homemade, hand-painted artisan goods, but he thought that most tourists wanted cheap prices to brag to their friends about instead of paying for the time and talent it took to hand-paint maracas. He possibly saw their extravagance as these tourists threw away money on luxury goods, when he faced the real needs of providing food and medicine for his family. He might have resented them, even as he craved their business. At the end of his rope, he might have cried out to God asking for a sign of generous, radical, slightly naive tourists.

Yes, most likely, we got conned, but if we continue to remember the worst about Cheap Miguel and allow that incident to turn us away from interacting with those who might rip us off, we are not living Christ-like lives.

Our other story happened in 2014. We were volunteer missionaries in Costa Rica for a year, which meant that every 90 days, we needed to leave the country for 72 hours to renew our visas. We visited the US once for the Christmas holidays and we visited Nicaragua twice. Now even though Nicaragua was right "next door" to Costa Rica, things were different there. We went from staying in a walled seminary to a small-town hotel. We were in a different climate, using different money, in a strange city, trying to figure out where we could get food cheaply. We got off the bus in Rivas, Nicaragua the first time and we were to wait for a Nazarene District Superintendent to help us get to our hotel. He arranged for us to volunteer at a local Nazarene school & even arranged rides to & from our hotel and school during our stay. He wasn't there when we got off the bus, so a kind "bicycle taxi" driver (think a bike pushing a bench two people can sit on) lent us his phone to call for our ride. Fast forward to our next trip to Nicaragua. We were supposed to get to our hotel ourselves, so when we got off the bus, we looked around and recognized the friendly bicycle taxi driver from before. Lucas asked him if he could give us a ride to our hotel. The taxi driver agrees and we hop on. Now those of you playing at home may realize that we forgot to do something important before we got in our taxi. We forgot to negotiate rates. We get to our hotel and Lucas asks the taxi driver what we owed. The number he stated was 5% of our cash for the entire trip, but that was for one of us, not both!! So in our first hour in Nicaragua, we spent 10% of our total cash for the hotel, our food, and our other necessities!! Needless to say, I was stressed and we felt conned.

Again, we could have let this event sour us towards all bicycle taxi drivers in Nicaragua and let a bitter root start growing in us, but that would not have been to react in a Christ-like way. We instead choose to forgive (and keep forgiving) this driver. We choose to learn the lesson, but set aside our feelings of being wronged. We had enough money for our trip and the money wasn't ours, but money that we were stewarding for God. Again, our naive response may have been his answer to prayer.

What was the point of these stories? Besides pointing out that we are still rather naive and gullible? A lot of time, we see parts of people's lives. We don't know their story. We don't know who they are, what they have faced, or why they are acting a certain way. If we see a glimpse of their actions and choose to believe the worst possible intentions behind those actions, we will become mistrustful and negative people, hardly the Christ-like believers we are called to be. But if we see people as God's creations, recognize that we don't know their story, and choose to believe the best, then we are letting love cover over their sins and mistakes.

So will you choose to believe the best about others?