Advent
November 30, 2015

Scripture Reading: Malachi 3:1-4

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? –Malachi 3:1-2

The prophets look forward to the coming of the promised one, but they almost always met it with a warning: Do you think you can handle the promised one when he comes? The people had plead for a savior, a way out of the oppression they were experiencing. The prophets say a savior is coming but with a strong implication he was coming as a partner. To be saved we must do our part too. Truth arrives with the savior. While the truth might set us free, it is sometimes painful.

When oppression is all we know, learning to be responsible for ourselves and each other is hard. It means making choices that require us to think and feel when we have no one to blame but ourselves. The prophets were speaking to a people whose ancestors had gotten caught up in the ways of the world, which had resulted in their being taken into literal slavery. Getting out of slavery does not happen with the wave of a magic savior’s wand. Getting out of slavery results in wandering in a wilderness of our own confusion until we are ready to be the people God wants us to be.

It is interesting that Advent begins immediately after black Friday. Today is actually the so called cyber Monday. Both are opportunities to shop and spend and accumulate stuff that doesn’t mean a thing. The sells tell us we are virtually getting rich off savings received from buying something we most likely do not need. In reality they enslave us to a way of being that just requires more spending and more accumulation and more dissatisfaction because they do not meet the real hungers of our hearts to love and to be loved. Advent is the time we prepare ourselves for the real Savior who came into the world and is coming into the world to bring us hope and peace. To show us the way of love.

Prayer: Lord, focus me this Advent toward the freedom of your chains of love. 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.