Joy in the adventure of faith!
Reality check: I often trudge through the daily schedule, like trudging through heavy snow. Maybe it’s me, not you. Are you filled with joy as you get up for each new day? Especially now in these packed days of December, everything to do and not enough time to do it? OK, point made. You and I often have days when we resign ourselves to trudging through the day.
So what should I write now? Trudging is wrong? No, here’s the move we need to make, days that wear us down are an invitation to look ahead. A beautiful Advent passage is Isaiah 35. Look at the impossible things God will do to transform a barren place. “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing” (Isaiah 35:1-2). Who’s going to make that happen? Read the whole chapter. Sight will be given to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the lame will leap and the mute speak. The One who does the impossible said, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matthew 11:4-5). “In gray, leaden days of winter, trudging through snow and schedule… Faith forward! Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus.
Gaudete is the Latin name for the third Sunday in Advent. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Gaudete, rejoice, is a command. Why not rejoice now in the things God will do? You know from experience, the crocuses will push through and bloom. By faith you know “the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35:10).
“Startled at the solemn warning, / Let the earthbound soul arise;
Christ, its sun, all sloth dispelling, / Shines upon the morning skies.”
(Lutheran Service Book, 345, 2).
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