Advent
December 3, 2018
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 3:1-2a
The hindsight of the New Testament identifies this messenger as John the Baptist and the Lord as Jesus. For most of us steeped in the stories of Jesus, it is hard to read this without such an understanding. I think that is one of the paradoxical traits of the Bible and it is good for us to struggle with what the scripture meant to the first who heard it and how that differs from what it means to us today.
What I understand from this reading, is that God’s system of our interrelationship with God from the beginning included accountability. Having coordinated planning for a large multipurpose state agency for many years, I spent much of my time awash in tracking the results of our work. That comes as a surprise to many who do not hold government in high esteem as being productive. Truth is we worked very hard at setting goals and trying to attain them.
Systems theory says that processes must be well coordinated with desired outcomes and they must be evenly weighted. It is possible to do processes very well and, if they are not designed to attain the goal, they are worthless. Likewise, we may have great goals, but we do not design and implement the right processes to attain the desired outcomes. Thus, if the desired outcome is loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves and the only processes, we are doing to reach that goal are for an exclusive group of people to complete exacting rituals perfectly that have no relationship to God or our neighbors we will not attain our desired outcome.
Malachi is indicated that our processes and our desired outcomes are out of synch, but help is on the way as one is coming who can correct our course and set us on the right path.
Prayer: Lord, as we enter the season of Advent, guide us to see the eternal nature of your ways and refocus on your desired outcomes and the right processes to attain them. Amen.