So Christmas is over.
We’re packing up the tree, tossing the left over treats, making plans for the New Year. As a kid the day after Christmas was my least favorite day of the year. The party was over and I was going to have to wait a full 365 days for the next one.
The thing about Advent though is that the celebration is just the beginning. The birth of Christ isn’t the end of the story.
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For many of us Christmas is difficult. Loneliness and grief stand in stark contrast to the glittery decorations and songs of joy that feel the season. If you have lost someone or are missing someone you couldn’t see this year know that I am praying for you (read My Prayer for You as You Grieve). Surviving the season is a feat in and of itself. The best part of the story is still to come! It’s about a God who entered the crappiness of our life and walked through it with us! He wasn’t immune to suffering, He entered into it and His story is just beginning.
As we enter 2016 I will be following the Revised Common Lectionary Sunday/Festival Readings and sharing my thoughts and studies every Wednesday. If you have written about any of the following verses online I would love for you to share them with us in your comments. Let’s talk!
Hold on! I’m coming! — Jeremiah 31:7-14
In Jeremiah 31 God is promising His people deliverance. With an unfailing everlasting love He has and will love them. They once found grace in the wilderness (vs 2) but His people are crying out for new mercies, saying the ones of old are not enough. God may have blessed old Israel but not the new one.
I often find myself in this place. Trying desperately to hold on to the miracles of the past, the ones my parents have shared with me, the ones in my own faint memory, but desiring greatly to be reminded in the present of God’s goodness. He took care of yesterday but I often forget that He will take care of today and tomorrow as well.
When God doesn’t answer my prayers the way I want and in the time frame I want I have been known to throw a fit. Thankfully God still holds on to me when I let go of Him. Why? Because He sticks to His promises even when we do not.
But the work to be done is not just His. He wants us actively involved. In verse 3 the words “again you will build…again I will build” emphasizes that God is not done with His people and they are not done working either.
The lectionary begins in verse 7, God’s call to His people to pray. (see Ps 102:17)
Vs 8-9 He brings together everyone who was lost. He restores His people, the broken and the whole, the injured and the healthy. He promises their weeping will turn into joy. The tears they cry are those of repentance (vs. 18-19 are a more detailed description of their tears). Though the journey is hard and crying out for forgiveness breaks us, joy will come. He promises to quench their thirst and provide for them just as Christ does in Matthew 5:6 and John 7:37 ).
Verse 13 is my favorite. I prefer the NASB version here. “I will turn their mourning into dancing.” From sorrow springs joy, something I search for continually in the hardest moments. In Mathew 5:4 we read “Blessed are those who mourn.” Why? “Because they will be comforted.” Their sorrow will one day turn to joy. (Have you found comfort? I did. Here’s how.)
Even though it’s not part of the Lectionary lets talk about v 15. This is the verse we see quoted as fulfillment of prophecy by Mathew 2:17-18. In The Dove of Peace I shared how Herod plays into the nativity and why he is overshadowed by the other characters. Christ did not show up on a sanitized perfect scene. He showed up in the midst of oppression and cruelty and He said wait for it, I’m about to show you something amazing.
Praising though brokenness — Psalms 147:12-20
Psalms 147 is all about praising God. Vs 2-3 sum up what we’ve just read in Jeremiah 31:7-14. God heals the broken and gathers His people to Him. He blesses those who mourn.
In these verses we are called to praise, then given reasons to praise. In the end He is God and we are not. I’m often stunned by the amount of times I hear people say “If that is what God is like then I don’t want Him.”
What I have come to learn in my 37 years of following Him is that He is God and I am not. He is a mystery I will never fully grasp but will continue to strive my whole life to do so. More then likely I will get things wrong. We all do. In the end, if I am wrong, if I have missed some essential element of the faith His grace is sufficient for even me.
Blessed in Christ — Ephesians 1:3-14
Ephesians 1:3-14 tells us that God summed it all up in Christ. All the promises of redemption and restoration in Jeremiah, all the reasons we are to praise Him in Psalm rest in the revelation of the mystery of Christ. He didn’t just sum up the past billions of years and reason for existence, He promised us a future when we place our hope in Christ. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” How? By Christ. By entering into the relationship and promises He has given them. When we enter into God’s care He comforts us in ways we could never understand looking from the outside in. To those who are unbelieving it looks like foolishness, to those walking through their grief in the comfort of Christ it is just that - comfort.
The story of Christ has just begun — John 1:(1-9) 10-18
We’ve spent the last month talking, singing, celebrating this God who became flesh. The innocence of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed among dirty animals, welcomed by and cared for by the poor and oppressed. He was the light that entered the darkness of the world. He did not dissipate the darkness, He entered it and shown through.
The star gave testimony of that light. It shined in the darkness but the story of Herod is testimony enough that the darkness did not comprehend the light.
All of December was about celebrating the Advent. It was about hopeful anticipation of the coming Savior. But the story did not end at the birth, only Christmas did.
Life continues forward.
This babe became a man who walked through some pretty hard times. Despite the testimony of prophets like John the Baptist, despite seeing with their own eyes, Jesus’ own people rejected Him.
The story of His time on earth, of God walking amongst us, has only just begun.
If you are here for the linkup it has been discontinued. In it’s place I will be posting thoughts on the Revised Common Lectionary for 2016. I hope you will join us. Every time you leave a comment on this blog you leave a link to your most recent blog post. I would love to keep in touch and see what you’ve been working on. Feel free to share here as well any posts you’ve written or found that refer to the above mentioned verses. Let’s talk!
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