Advent Notes: Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD
Advent Notes
God is with us.
These are comforting words, and they are meant to comfort, but not only to comfort, for the Incarnation means more than God coming down and becoming man, as wonderful and as awe inspiring as that truth is. Paul wrote, “But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ … , and raised us up with Him, and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places … “ Jesus said, I “will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” We are to be where the Lord is; through His power and grace, we are raised to be with Him.
Somehow, however, we just don’t get it.
Maybe it is because the serpent in the Garden of Eden was even more clever than we usually give him credit for being. He told a lie so close to the truth that it’s not surprising that we “fell” for it. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
In fact, man was indeed created to be “like God”. God made us in His image and after His likeness, but when we turned from Him, we lost the image, the reflection, the semblance of God, and we cannot recover it for ourselves. Yet, God Himself restored it in Christ. As Christians, we are called to be like Him, to become what God created us to be.
Yet, instead of receiving this message as good news and acting on it with God’s grace, we prefer to moralize insisting that, in fact, we alone do know what is good and evil and therefore we can make sweeping pronouncements about everything from the fine points of theology to politics to vaccines. It sometimes seems as though what many want to do is to reverse the roles and make God in their own image complete with their own opinions, attitudes and prejudices. The result is that we become deaf and blind, unable to hear not only others, but also unable to perceive the presence of the God who is with us.
Perhaps we need to learn again to listen, for as St. Bernard wrote, “We merit the beatific vision by our constancy in listening … Since the sense of sight is not yet ready, let us rouse up our hearing, let us exercise it and take in the truth … The hearing, if it be loving, alert and faithful, will restore the sight.” As we regain hearing and sight, with St. Augustine, we can then pray “Lord, give what you command, and command what you will” for we will abandon our own presuppositions and simply say, “Yes” and “Amen” to the good news that, indeed, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us… and that changes everything.
This is what the season of Advent is all about.
During Advent, we look back with great joy and thanksgiving to the birth of our Lord and Savior in Bethlehem even as we look ahead with great hope to the coming of Christ in glory at the end of the age. But Advent is not just a season of commemoration and anticipation; it is also a time to remind ourselves that now, right here and now in the present moment, is the time to pray, “Even so. Come, Lord Jesus! ” knowing, as we pray, that we have already been found by the One we seek.
Thomas Merton once wrote, “A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.”
May God help us in the seeking, and in the finding, in the listening and in the living. May we find in Advent the profound truth that, indeed, God is with us…
“As we regain hearing and sight, with St. Augustine, we can then pray “Lord, give what you command, and command what you will” for we will abandon our own presuppositions and simply say, “Yes” and “Amen” to the good news that, indeed, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us… and that changes everything.”
The older I get and the harder life becomes…this is the Gospel for me…it does change everything…
My favorite Advent/Christmas word is “Emmanuel”-God with us. He came to be with us and in us so that He can transform us into who He wants us truly to be. i used to find that frightening-how could I ever be like Jesus? But, as I’ve stopped struggling to be like Him and have learned to cooperate with what He is doing, I see changes and my love for Him growing. Thank you for a wonderful Advent reminder!
Linn
Many thanks!
Words we need to survive in this cursed world
Come soon, Lord Jesus. Come and cleanse this beautiful planet.
My morning reading was Moses finally words to Gods chosen – calling out the priests and the treachery of the people.
Am I wrong in thinking today’s world is quite similar?
“When I’ve got no answers
For hurt knees or cancers
But a Savior who suffers them with me”
John Mark McMillan
I wish I had heard messages like this growing up…what I always heard was that I was a worm dangling by a thread over the pit of hell.
The “good news’ was that I could barely escape the fire if I did thus and such.
Nobody bothered to tell me that I had already been reconciled to God in Christ…so I spent most of the rest of my life seeking that reconciliation as if it were out there if I behaved.
The real gospel is what is written here…and it’s really good news…
AMEN, Michael
We are snowed in up here – I’ll try to curb my pontificating. 🙆
The “good news’ was that I could barely escape the fire if I did thus and such.
I think the church and to a lesser extent perhaps, the world is rediscovering grace. Kirsten Powers, a CNN writer, has just published a book on the topic.
Philip Yancey’s new memoir parallels the journey I think many of us are on — from seeing God as a Divine Angry Finger-pointer to a God of abundant love, grace and mercy.
“But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”
(Romans 5:15–17 ESV)
This whole chapter is about what Jesus has already done…yet how many conversations here begin and end with sin as the primary focus?
The sin issue has been handled…the focus should move to grace…
Michael
Moralizing over sin (and everything else) allows for a supposed superiority over others… whoever the others might be…
“The sin issue has been handled…the focus should move to grace…”
WORTH REPEATING …. IMNSHO 🙂
“Theology is practical, especially now… If you do not listen to Theology that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones – bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas.”
C S Lewis