Advent Devotions

  A Lower Room 

Imagine this in your church’s Advent devotional book (because it’s not in mine – raising a lovely, perfectly plucked eyebrow, Miss Virginia rejected it. And Axel, apparently preferring orthodoxy to friendship, didn’t want it for Grace Lutheran’s either.)

Advent Schizophrenia

Read Malachi 3:1-3*

 

​We are never more in the dark than in Advent. We are awaiting the incarnation, God’s taking human form in the infant Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph, a schoolgirl and the carpenter from Galilee. But while we wait, we celebrate the Christ that will judge the whole damn (damned) world, the awful Cosmic Christ of the little apocalypses and Patmos John’s great big one. So, which do we follow? Are we all in with our own salvation and our Almighty Salvator's ruling the world with fire and the sword? Or, are we following the humble one that was born in a manger? Which? 

     Because it can’t be both. Even the Redeemer of all cannot reconcile illogic.

 12.15.21 

 _______________
* If you can’t be bothered to look it up, here it is:

 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? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.