Advent 1

Isaiah 64:
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— 2as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.

6We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.


Advent Season is the time of the year that we join millions of Christians all over the world in a time of waiting and watching. During this time we ask God to sanctify and stimulate our imagination so that we may join our hearts and minds to the hearts and minds of God's people who were awaiting the first advent of Jesus. In so doing, we are reminded of many important truths. Let's consider one of them here. The darkness of the world requires God's redemption, God's work, God's solution - not a solution of human making. We pick up this thought from the reading of Isaiah this Sunday. The prophet cries out for God to keep his promise to bring redemption to the world, confessing that only the God of Israel can do such a thing ("No ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait on him"). This language is picked up by Saint Paul and built upon when he talks to the Corinthians about the uniqueness of the gospel of the cross of Christ in 1 Corinthians 2:9 (No eye has seen or ear heard what God has prepared for those who love him), the point in Corinthians being that the cross of Christ is unique and basic to the heart of what God is doing to bring salvation to his people. This truth is foundational to our spiritual formation as Christians but we easily forget its importance. All too often we settle for a diminished experience of God's love because we have failed to ask him to open our hearts more fully to what he and he alone can do - transform us so that we are more fully capable of receiving his love, returning it to him, and more fully giving and receiving love in our relationships with others. The time of advent invites us to confess to God that we are not yet who we should be and that we will not flourish as well as we are intended to without the deep work of his spirit in us. So, we are to cry out with the prophet for God to tear open the heavens, come down to us, and do what only he can do in our hearts.

Questions for discussion:

1. Do you take opportunities during Advent Season or other times to ask God to work more deeply in your heart to put more of his love in you? Can you think of patterns of thinking and living of which you need to repent because they stand in your way of participating more fully in God's love and God's life?

2. Advent season reminds us pointedly that God's light and God's light alone is what is required to dispel the darkness in this world. How do you and I apply this imaginatively to the darkness that still lurks in our hearts? Here is one possible answer: there are many times in our lives when we struggle silently with what we know deep down are thoughts and inclinations that draw us away from the love of God. In some instances, these thoughts and inclinations have been lurking so long that they have taken up squatter's rights and we barely notice them. Asking God to shine his light on these intruders and move us away from them and towards a deeper experience of his love is one way to think imaginatively about applying what we confess to be true: that God's light and God's light alone is what is required...... can you think of other applications?