This year I decided I was finally going to do an Advent devotional for the month of December. It's something I seem to forget about until mid-month and then the perfectionist in me doesn't want to do something half-way so I forego the whole experience. But this year, I'm on it!
I'm enjoying Ann Voskamp's "The Greatest Gift" devotional. Advent celebrates the anticipated arrival of Jesus. And even though the story line of Christmas morning is familiar, I'm seeing and experiencing Advent differently this year.
Really, the point of Advent is to focus on the anticipated birth of Christ. Anticipation is a funny thing. It's a wild card in our hand of emotions -- sometimes anticipation functions like excitement, sometimes like a pre-celebration, but sometimes it's the vehicle for anxiety. And if you think about it, it's all made up -- anticipation is whatever we imagine it to be. Experience informs our imagination, but we choose which thoughts get air-time. If I anticipate that a meal is going to taste great because of the way it smells, a good portion of my delight in the actual experience is due to what I held in anticipation. If I dread visiting the doctor or dentist, my anticipation functions like anxiety because there's a real chance of an unpleasant outcome, and my anticipation may actually make the experience worse. It highlights our joys but it can also plummet our sorrow. Wild card.
But I wonder if this was what the first Advent felt like. Was Mary's pregnancy with Jesus one of pure joy? Did anyone around them express the elation that would be fit for a King before He was born? Or were most people just kind of like us -- not banking too much on someone's "crazy idea" but also kind of watching them as we go about our business. I don't know for sure, but if current social trends are any indication, we're not inclined to spend time on much of anything that doesn't have some kind of personal reward. We want our anticipation to count for something good! It's important to see how anticipation fuels our actions. How we interact with the unseen, namely the life of faith and the condition of our emotional hearts, is as important if not moreso than how we interact with whatever we can see and experience tangibly. The two are intermixed, but it seems we only want to acknowledge one. We lean on the visible external and negate the heart. But God is all about the heart.
I've had students ask, "How do we know if something is God's will?" And many times the answer that gets played like the trump card is, "Well, if it happens, then you know it was God's will." Sure -- that makes sense and I think most would agree that in the grand scheme of life, the big moments that make you who you are were chosen by God or at the very least allowed to occur under His sovereignty. But that's an answer based on measurable experience and hindsight, not on faith. It's ironic to me that we would answer questions of faith by way of calculation since faith itself cannot be measured by humankind. Only God knows our hearts. Yet, Mary knew it was the will of God for her to bring Jesus into the world as the final substitute for the brokenness in humanity's relationship with God. She knew that from the moment the angel Gabriel said it, yet she waited 9 full months to see the outcome. While her anticipation grew, her faith never wavered. Can we say the same?
I don't know about you, but I sometimes have a hard time believing with my whole self that God is for me, that He hears me, that I haven't been left out or forgotten. Don't get me wrong -- I know the facts intellectually... but my heart is slow to follow and sometimes that gap feels wide. And if I'm not careful to rest on what I know is true, I start chasing (or chasing away) the feelings that creep up into that gap. This is the critical question for today:
When you know something is true, but it's not yet real, where is your hope and assurance? What would cause you to breathe a sigh of relief? Is it the Word of God or would it be something external like a text from a friend or money at just the right time? I think we have three common responses in the face of uncertainty: standing still with shrugged shoulders, looking backward, and looking forward.
Standing still with shrugged shoulders-- Ignorant/unwilling to engage/unsure but unconcerned: this may lead to things like numbing, reverting to what's known instead of engaging with new and different, or even abdicating responsibility because we don't want to think about the results of success or failure. This may come out sounding like "Yeah, I guess that could happen, but we'll see. I'm not counting on anything. Just keeping moving on." It's neither faith or fear, but it also has no direction. This is Switzerland: not taking a side.
Looking backward-- Fearful anticipation/anxiety: Allowing the past to fuel the assumption that if I can't see all of what's going to happen, it must be a disaster on the horizon "just like last time." Often, this results in doubting what you may know intellectually or unintentionally sabotaging what's good because you're sure something bad will happen. I heard someone say a few weeks ago they wouldn't buy a gift for someone in a delicate health state because "then for sure something will happen." This totally gives fear the final word.
OR...
Facing forward-- Faith-filled anticipation/HOPE: the willingness to say "Even if I can't see all the steps, I'm going to trust that the God of the universe who breathed everything into existence just for fun has a pretty good idea of what's about to happen and He loves me enough to see me all the way through until glory."
I want to be a woman of hope, even if it brings disappointment along the way. I'd rather live a life intentionally focused on hope than to be cynical, bitter, and filled with doubt just to avoid potential disappointments. Hope isn't the absence of disappointment, it's the fuel that pushes us past poor outcomes and into the next phase of growth. My life is already filled with moments and examples of stuff I could've never planned for myself and outcomes I couldn't have anticipated. And yet, unequivocally, I can declare: GOD IS FAITHFUL. He has come to us as Jesus so that we can know His goodness up-close like a sweet baby in trusted arms. I know what it is to be held by Jesus on dark days and what it is to explode with joy because of Him. Mary had the extreme privilege of being asked to hold Jesus as a baby so that one day He would hold her (and all of humanity's) sin on the cross and make the way for us to enjoy God's presence again. She couldn't have known the impact her obedience would have, but without hope in a good and loving God, this story line could've been very different.
Are there still things I wrestle with? Ha -- have you read anything else I've written? YES. I think God tests our faith precisely in this way. This is MOSTLY what I wrestle with! Romans 8 talks about "hope that is seen is no hope at all, for who hopes for what they already have?" We don't live life anticipating the joy of the past -- we live for the hope of what's to come; what is not yet seen. If you know His heart and character, it shouldn't surprise us when we regularly find ourselves in Advent seasons. This is where we can see Jesus 24/7 -- in the moments where something is already true but not yet real life. The challenge is to respond like Mary, like Abraham, like the apostles as they planted churches... we may not know the outcome, but we know our job and we love our God. It's entirely possible to know God will do something without having factual evidence to show someone else. This is the power of "yet."
So, whatever you're anticipating, whatever your Advent, wherever you are desperate to see Jesus' face and hear His words, remember this is precisely what Christmas is all about. The Christmas story unfolded in phases just like our lives. It took 33 years for us to see why Jesus' birth truly mattered and it'll take until glory to know the extent of His impact and love and joy. Don't give up the faith you have just because you can't see the rest of the story. Good writers don't give away their endings. :) The Author of Life is no different.
I'm enjoying Ann Voskamp's "The Greatest Gift" devotional. Advent celebrates the anticipated arrival of Jesus. And even though the story line of Christmas morning is familiar, I'm seeing and experiencing Advent differently this year.
Really, the point of Advent is to focus on the anticipated birth of Christ. Anticipation is a funny thing. It's a wild card in our hand of emotions -- sometimes anticipation functions like excitement, sometimes like a pre-celebration, but sometimes it's the vehicle for anxiety. And if you think about it, it's all made up -- anticipation is whatever we imagine it to be. Experience informs our imagination, but we choose which thoughts get air-time. If I anticipate that a meal is going to taste great because of the way it smells, a good portion of my delight in the actual experience is due to what I held in anticipation. If I dread visiting the doctor or dentist, my anticipation functions like anxiety because there's a real chance of an unpleasant outcome, and my anticipation may actually make the experience worse. It highlights our joys but it can also plummet our sorrow. Wild card.
But I wonder if this was what the first Advent felt like. Was Mary's pregnancy with Jesus one of pure joy? Did anyone around them express the elation that would be fit for a King before He was born? Or were most people just kind of like us -- not banking too much on someone's "crazy idea" but also kind of watching them as we go about our business. I don't know for sure, but if current social trends are any indication, we're not inclined to spend time on much of anything that doesn't have some kind of personal reward. We want our anticipation to count for something good! It's important to see how anticipation fuels our actions. How we interact with the unseen, namely the life of faith and the condition of our emotional hearts, is as important if not moreso than how we interact with whatever we can see and experience tangibly. The two are intermixed, but it seems we only want to acknowledge one. We lean on the visible external and negate the heart. But God is all about the heart.
I've had students ask, "How do we know if something is God's will?" And many times the answer that gets played like the trump card is, "Well, if it happens, then you know it was God's will." Sure -- that makes sense and I think most would agree that in the grand scheme of life, the big moments that make you who you are were chosen by God or at the very least allowed to occur under His sovereignty. But that's an answer based on measurable experience and hindsight, not on faith. It's ironic to me that we would answer questions of faith by way of calculation since faith itself cannot be measured by humankind. Only God knows our hearts. Yet, Mary knew it was the will of God for her to bring Jesus into the world as the final substitute for the brokenness in humanity's relationship with God. She knew that from the moment the angel Gabriel said it, yet she waited 9 full months to see the outcome. While her anticipation grew, her faith never wavered. Can we say the same?
I don't know about you, but I sometimes have a hard time believing with my whole self that God is for me, that He hears me, that I haven't been left out or forgotten. Don't get me wrong -- I know the facts intellectually... but my heart is slow to follow and sometimes that gap feels wide. And if I'm not careful to rest on what I know is true, I start chasing (or chasing away) the feelings that creep up into that gap. This is the critical question for today:
When you know something is true, but it's not yet real, where is your hope and assurance? What would cause you to breathe a sigh of relief? Is it the Word of God or would it be something external like a text from a friend or money at just the right time? I think we have three common responses in the face of uncertainty: standing still with shrugged shoulders, looking backward, and looking forward.
Standing still with shrugged shoulders-- Ignorant/unwilling to engage/unsure but unconcerned: this may lead to things like numbing, reverting to what's known instead of engaging with new and different, or even abdicating responsibility because we don't want to think about the results of success or failure. This may come out sounding like "Yeah, I guess that could happen, but we'll see. I'm not counting on anything. Just keeping moving on." It's neither faith or fear, but it also has no direction. This is Switzerland: not taking a side.
Looking backward-- Fearful anticipation/anxiety: Allowing the past to fuel the assumption that if I can't see all of what's going to happen, it must be a disaster on the horizon "just like last time." Often, this results in doubting what you may know intellectually or unintentionally sabotaging what's good because you're sure something bad will happen. I heard someone say a few weeks ago they wouldn't buy a gift for someone in a delicate health state because "then for sure something will happen." This totally gives fear the final word.
OR...
Facing forward-- Faith-filled anticipation/HOPE: the willingness to say "Even if I can't see all the steps, I'm going to trust that the God of the universe who breathed everything into existence just for fun has a pretty good idea of what's about to happen and He loves me enough to see me all the way through until glory."
I want to be a woman of hope, even if it brings disappointment along the way. I'd rather live a life intentionally focused on hope than to be cynical, bitter, and filled with doubt just to avoid potential disappointments. Hope isn't the absence of disappointment, it's the fuel that pushes us past poor outcomes and into the next phase of growth. My life is already filled with moments and examples of stuff I could've never planned for myself and outcomes I couldn't have anticipated. And yet, unequivocally, I can declare: GOD IS FAITHFUL. He has come to us as Jesus so that we can know His goodness up-close like a sweet baby in trusted arms. I know what it is to be held by Jesus on dark days and what it is to explode with joy because of Him. Mary had the extreme privilege of being asked to hold Jesus as a baby so that one day He would hold her (and all of humanity's) sin on the cross and make the way for us to enjoy God's presence again. She couldn't have known the impact her obedience would have, but without hope in a good and loving God, this story line could've been very different.
Are there still things I wrestle with? Ha -- have you read anything else I've written? YES. I think God tests our faith precisely in this way. This is MOSTLY what I wrestle with! Romans 8 talks about "hope that is seen is no hope at all, for who hopes for what they already have?" We don't live life anticipating the joy of the past -- we live for the hope of what's to come; what is not yet seen. If you know His heart and character, it shouldn't surprise us when we regularly find ourselves in Advent seasons. This is where we can see Jesus 24/7 -- in the moments where something is already true but not yet real life. The challenge is to respond like Mary, like Abraham, like the apostles as they planted churches... we may not know the outcome, but we know our job and we love our God. It's entirely possible to know God will do something without having factual evidence to show someone else. This is the power of "yet."
So, whatever you're anticipating, whatever your Advent, wherever you are desperate to see Jesus' face and hear His words, remember this is precisely what Christmas is all about. The Christmas story unfolded in phases just like our lives. It took 33 years for us to see why Jesus' birth truly mattered and it'll take until glory to know the extent of His impact and love and joy. Don't give up the faith you have just because you can't see the rest of the story. Good writers don't give away their endings. :) The Author of Life is no different.
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