Advent
December 8, 2015

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 12:2-6

Surely God is my salvation;
   I will trust, and will not be afraid,
for the Lord God is my strength and my might;
   he has become my salvation.  

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
And you will say on that day:
Give thanks to the Lord,
   call on his name;
make known his deeds among the nations;
   proclaim that his name is exalted. –Isaiah 12:2-3

I have been struggling recently with the importance of what we believe as it relates to our life of faith. Strange problem you say, surely what we believe drives our life of faith, but does it? Several years ago, but at least in the era of computers, I changed my screensaver to display a phrase I had read on a church marque that struck me as being particularly meaty: If you do not live it, you do not believe it. What is particularly puzzling to me of recent times is whether the phrase is reversible or not: If you live it, you believe it. Would that apply if you could not name “it” by its properly prescribed tenet of faith? Who is the Good Samaritan in our time and place?

These questions matter because many of us are having trouble relating to those in our society who were/are not steeped in our Judeo-Christian stories and traditions from birth, and probably do not even know from where the story of the Good Samaritan came nor would it have any cultural relevance for them. In a lot of instances, they would have stopped and helped an injured man by the side of the road while we, who know the story, roll up our windows, lock our doors, and drive on by. The government can take care of those folks as long as they do not raise our taxes to do it.

How meaningful is our message of salvation when it is only tied to an afterlife that does not exist in the minds of many whose existence on earth is closer to hell right now than it is to heaven?

Prayer: Lord, make us seekers of justice in a world where it is sorely lacking, not just justice for those who think and believe like us but for all your children even if we do not identify them by your name. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized 
Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights 
reserved.