Isaiah 4:2-6, the Message

And that’s when God’s Branch will sprout green and lush. The produce of the country will give Israel’s survivors something to be proud of again. Oh, they’ll hold their heads high! Everyone left behind in Zion, all the discards and rejects in Jerusalem, will be reclassified as “holy”—alive and therefore precious. God will give Zion’s women a good bath. He’ll scrub the bloodstained city of its violence and brutality, purge the place with a firestorm of judgment.

Then God will bring back the ancient pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and mark Mount Zion and everyone in it with his glorious presence, his immense, protective presence, shade from the burning sun and shelter from the driving rain.

It seems the prophet Isaiah likes the idea of ‘glory’ a lot himself! This is a familiar Advent text, so I’m glad I chose to read it in an unfamiliar translation/paraphrase. “God’s branch will sprout green and lush. . . ” 

Yes, indeed! Sprout, it did, in the person and work of Jesus the Messiah. And this passage, in many ways looks forward to the ongoing work of that Messiah in the lives and hearts of people. At some point, we will see the glory of God, live and in person — “his immense, protective presence . . .” as shade and shelter.

Shade and shelter — something I crave whenever the sun is beating down on me. And I love this word picture here — that God, our great and glorious God, is available to us as exactly that: shade and shelter.

Right about now, Lord, I could use a goodly dose of both! So thank you for your promised presence and for your generous gift of what I need, when I need it. 

Psalm 27, NRSV

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
    whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
    of whom shall I be afraid?

When evildoers assail me
    to devour my flesh—
my adversaries and foes—
    they shall stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me,
    my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me,
    yet I will be confident.

 One thing I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
   to live in the house of theLord
all the days of my life,
   to behold the beauty of theLord,
and to inquire in his temple.

For he will hide me in his shelter
    in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
    he will set me high on a rock.

Now my head is lifted up
    above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent
    sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord.

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,
    be gracious to me and answer me!

“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”
    Your face,Lord, do I seek.

     Do not hide your face from me.

Do not turn your servant away in anger,
    you who have been my help.
Do not cast me off, do not forsake me,
    O God of my salvation!

If my father and mother forsake me,
    the Lord will take me up.

Teach me your way, O Lord,
    and lead me on a level path
    because of my enemies.

Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
    for false witnesses have risen against me,
    and they are breathing out violence.

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
    in the land of the living.

Wait for theLord;
    be strong, and let your heart take courage;
    wait for theLord!

I love this psalm. I could easily have ‘bolded’ the entire song, because every word is precious to me. But when I read it through this year, it was that penultimate line that grabbed my heart.

I do believe I see — and will continue to see — the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I see it in my husband’s face, in my children’s love for their children, in my grandchildren’s growing understanding of who they are and who they want to become.

I see it in the beauty of this town we call home, in the beauty that still resides inside my aging, dementing mama, in my church community. I see the goodness of the Lord threading its way through my entire life, all the great stuff, and all the hard stuff, too.

And I am grateful, right down to my toes.

Thank  you for your goodness, Lord. For the ways in which you remind us that life is good, even when it doesn’t always feel like it is. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to understand where you are and what you’re doing in the people and situations of my life. And help me to show forth your goodness in all my words and actions, during Advent and always.

 Isaiah 40:1-11, NRSV

Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all people shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

A voice says, “Cry out!”
    And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass,
    their constancy is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades,
    when the breath of theLord blows upon it;
    surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;
    but the word of our God will stand forever.

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”

See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
    and his recompense before him.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

I cannot read this passage without hearing Handel’s ‘Messiah’ in my head. Just cannot do it. Talk about divine inspiration — that guy Handel had a direct pipeline, I do believe. 

During this Advent season, I’m asking God to show me glory, to give me a peek at who God is in all that radiant beauty. And more often than not, the glory I find is in the sky. Early or late, the autumn/winter sky is just plain glorious here on the central coast of California.

It’s something to do with the position of the planet in relation to the sun, the angle of the light and how it changes with the seasons. And during these months, the sky is magnificent! 

I’d like to make sure my own, personal ‘planet’ is lined up well with the Son as I continue to occupy this autumn season of my long life, moving ever closer to winter, one day at at time. Because if I can stand in the right place, then maybe some of that glory will shine right through me.

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Thank you for words like ‘glory,’ Lord, and for what they conjure up in our imaginations. Thank you that you are a God of glory and that you invite us right into that radiance. Shine on me, Lord. And shine through me, too.

Ezekiel 36:24-28, NRSV

I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

I kind of look for hearts. Yeah, it’s a weird little thing of mine. I love them. And on our recent vacation, I was watching some birds as they took baths in a small birdbath nearby and right next to me was this vine. And lo and behold, if I didn’t spy a small heart-shaped hole, left there by some local insect. Can you find it in the picture?

When I add a heart-shaped rock to my collection, or use a stick to make a heart in the sand, or cut a heart out of colored paper to give to one of my grandgirls, I think of this verse.

A new heart. And not a heavenly heart, either. A heart of flesh. A soft heart, a real heart, a love-filled heart. That’s the business God is in, friends. Making us as beautifully human as possible. TRULY human. Looking more and more like Jesus.

Thank you for this promise, O Lord. For the beauty of your transforming work in us and through us. Remind us that our hearts are designed to be soft and tender, not hard and impregnable. As we move closer to that stable, help us to open our hearts, to take a risk here or there, a risk on love.

Acts 11:19-26, NLT 

Meanwhile, the believers who fled from Jerusalem during the persecution after Stephen’s death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, scattering the Good News, but only to Jews. However, some of the believers who went to Antioch from Cyprus and Cyrene also gave their message about the Lord Jesus to some Greeks. And the Lord honored this effort so that large numbers of these Gentiles became believers.

When the church at Jerusalem heard what had happened, they sent Barnabas to Antioch to help the new converts. When he arrived and saw the wonderful things God was doing, he was filled with excitement and joy, and encouraged the believers to stay close to the Lord, whatever the cost. Barnabas was a kindly person, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith. As a result, large numbers of people were added to the Lord.

Then Barnabas went on to Tarsus to hunt for Paul. When he found him, he brought him back to Antioch; and both of them stayed there for a full year teaching the many new converts. (It was there at Antioch that the believers were first called “Christians.”)

This is the story of how we became Christ-followers. Without that visit to Antioch, without the story-telling to the Greeks there, the church as we know it would not exist. 

It just came out, you know? These excited new Jewish followers carried the tale back home after all the festival hubbub in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And they could.not.keep.quiet.

“And the Lord honored their efforts. . . ” How? Maybe by sending them Barnabas. Barnabas the encourager, who got so jazzed by what he found that he rejoiced the news all the way back to the head honchos in the big J. But you know something? Jerusalem is NOT where he went: he went to Tarsus.

Tarsus? Why??

To find a guy named Paul. A former persecutor of the infant church named Saul was now the number one convert, with a brand-spankin’ new name. And together, Paul and Barnabas went back to Antioch to bring kindness, encouragement and instruction.

It’s probably not the most politically correct thing to admit, but I’ve never had a great desire to resemble Paul. But Barnabas? Oh, yeah. I’d L O V E to look a lot like him.

Lord, we give you thanks for the enthusiasm of the early church! For their heartfelt zeal for you and for their faithfulness in telling the story to everyone they met. And we thank you for both Barnabas and Paul, who took those new converts to the next step in their own discipleship. What a great gift to the church then — and now. Thank you!

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13, The Message

 God, you smiled on your good earth!
    You brought good times back to Jacob!
You lifted the cloud of guilt from your people,
    you put their sins far out of sight.
You took back your sin-provoked threats,
    you cooled your hot, righteous anger.

I can’t wait to hear what he’ll say.
    God’s about to pronounce his people well,
The holy people he loves so much,
    so they’ll never again live like fools.
See how close his salvation is to those who fear him?
    Our country is home base for Glory!

Love and Truth meet in the street,
    Right Living and Whole Living embrace and kiss!
Truth sprouts green from the ground,
    Right Living pours down from the skies!
Oh yes! God gives Goodness and Beauty;
    our land responds with Bounty and Blessing.
Right Living strides out before him,
    and clears a path for his passage.

Isn’t this passage a lovely breath of fresh air after the last several days of lament? Another reason I love the Word — it’s rich with texture and variety, with words that meet us wherever we happen to be at any given moment.

The more traditional translations of this passage usually say something like, “Righteousness and peace kiss each other,” words which I love. But I was struck by Peterson’s paraphrase of this entire selection from the psalms. He chooses the word ‘truth’ over the word ‘faithfulness,’ in the section right after the kissing bit. ‘Faithfulness’ is the English word used in many other versions of this psalm.

I like that choice. In fact, I think the two words are more synonymous than we might realize. 

Think about it. We are called to be who we are in Jesus — our truest selves. And when we are our truest, best selves, we will look more and more like Jesus, who is truth, and who is faithful.

And I love the picture of that faithful truth growing like a wild, green thing, straight out of the dust from which we came! 

Thank you, Jesus, for showing us truth, for being truth. And thank you for modeling the faithfulness of our God and inviting us to live a life that looks like yours, rich with love and laughter and self-giving. 

Micah 5:1-5a, NLT 

Mobilize! The enemy lays siege to Jerusalem! With a rod they shall strike the Judge of Israel on the face.

“O Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!” God will abandon his people to their enemies until she who is to give birth has her son; then at last his fellow countrymen—the exile remnants of Israel—will rejoin their brethren in their own land.

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and his people shall remain there undisturbed, for he will be greatly honored all around the world. He will be our Peace. And when the Assyrian invades our land and marches across our hills, he will appoint seven shepherds to watch over us, eight princes to lead us.

Surely this prophecy was written for something that happened within, or soon after, the lifetime of the prophet. And yet, here is this beautiful kernel that speaks of something way out in the future, something Micah didn’t have a clue about.

“He shall be our peace. . . ” Now that, I can live with. That, in truth, brings life — and hope and of course, peace, to this over-anxious Nana. I love seeing it highlighted, where I can pick it up and turn it over in my mind, say it out loud while I walk and pray.

What we’re doing in this Advent devotional series is what the ancient church called lectio divina, or ‘holy listening.’ We’re taking (usually) short passages and reading through them slowly and intentionally and asking God to bring a small phrase, a line, or even a single word to the front of our minds as we listen. 

And that is the one that pops for me in this passage. What about you?

Thank you, Lord, that you are all about peace, that you bring it, you live it, you promise it, you hallow it, you show us how it’s done. Be our peace this Advent and into the year ahead of us; help us to listen to you well.

Micah 4:6-13, NRSV

In that day, says the Lord,
    I will assemble the lame
and gather those who have been driven away,
    and those whom I have afflicted.
The lame I will make the remnant,
    and those who were cast off, a strong nation;
and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion
    now and forevermore.

And you, O tower of the flock,
    hill of daughter Zion,
to you it shall come,
    the former dominion shall come,
    the sovereignty of daughter Jerusalem.

Now why do you cry aloud?
    Is there no king in you?
Has your counselor perished,
    that pangs have seized you like a woman in labor?
Writhe and groan, O daughter Zion,
    like a woman in labor;
for now you shall go forth from the city
    and camp in the open country;
    you shall go to Babylon.
There you shall be rescued,
    there the Lord will redeem you
    from the hands of your enemies.

Now many nations
    are assembled against you,
saying, “Let her be profaned,
    and let our eyes gaze upon Zion.”
But they do not know
    the thoughts of the Lord;
they do not understand his plan,
    that he has gathered them as sheaves to the threshing floor.
Arise and thresh,
    O daughter Zion,
for I will make your horn iron
    and your hoofs bronze;
you shall beat in pieces many peoples,
    and shall devote their gain to the Lord,
    their wealth to the Lord of the whole earth.

I gotta say, the pickin’s were slim for today’s scripture reading. It was either a repeat of yesterday’s psalm, the description of the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18 or this bit from Micah. 

And isn’t that just the way with the Word? I don’t like all of it, you know? But it’s there and it must be read and absorbed and dealt with. The truest line in this piece for me is the one I’ve highlighted.

Duh.

I most certainly DON’T know the thoughts of the Lord. There is no way I can grasp even a smidgen of them. Which is exactly why we have this book and why Jesus came — to help bridge the enormous gap that happens between the divine and the human. So, I’ll read this passage and I’ll say thank you for it, even though I don’t particularly l o v e it and I’ll hold onto that central truth.

I can’t know it all. But I CAN know Jesus and what Jesus shows me about God and the whole of creation. And what I learn there helps me deal with what I read in places like this one. 

Thank you for coming, Jesus. Thank you for showing us the good stuff along with the hard stuff. Thank you for inviting us into a new way of living and thinking — now, please help us to live well and think well.