Use this devo as you are able, in whole or in part. Don’t feel compelled to read it all. Simply read and meditate upon whatever catches your attention. The goal is enjoying time with God through His Word and in prayer. Questions about the devotional elements?
What is Advent?
Advent is the four-week season of preparation to celebrate the coming of Jesus at Christmas. This year we will prepare room for Christ in our hearts and lives through daily readings in from Philip Reinder’s Seeking God’s Face and the occasional work of art: a song, a painting, or a poem. Something that will sneak past our usual barriers of noise, hustle and busyness to help cultivate a discerning eye for both our sin and the hope Christ carries with him.
Our hope is that this season of expectant waiting will help us to tap into both our sense that the world is not as it should be AND (a glorious and!) that God in Christ has come down to bring healing and consolation to our broken world and hearts. Advent is a season, then, where we say: All shall be well! Because the true King has come!
Call to Prayer
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” (Isa. 52:7)
Scripture Reading
Read the following passages and then spend a moment in quiet stillness before God.
Readings: Psalm 72:1-2, 12-14 and Luke 3:7-9, 15-17
Dwelling
Read again slowly…find a word or phrase that catches your eye or moves your heart…slowly repeat it…pray your thoughts, desires, needs, and feelings from your meditation…enjoy the presence of your Lord and Savior.
Free Prayer
- Pray for the beauty of creation
- Pray for the care of creation
Prayer
Holy God, lead me to repentance that brings life. Not the groveling show that’s more about convincing you I’m worthy of your forgiveness, but the cut-to-the-heart kind of repentance that is grieved at my sin because of your holiness and glory. Move me by your mercy and lead me to a life of joyful obedience. Amen. (prayer based on the Westminster Confession, Question 15.2).
*Prayer borrowed from Philip Reinders’ Seeking God’s Face: Praying with the Bible through the Year
Wonder
Advent begins in the dark. Literally. It is the darkest time of the year. Advent, which begins our church calendar, begins facing this darkness. Advent comes to us as a gift of darkness, emptiness, and says – will you enter this period of waiting with me? Will you pause to remember and recognize your own emptiness and darkness – and practice longing for the light? These works of art invite us to enter into the wonder and waiting for the Light of the World to dawn on Christmas morn.
In Memoriam XXVIII by Tennyson (art by Linda Richardson)
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish’d no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:
But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll’d me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
Reflection by Linda Richardson
This is a very strange artwork, so if you are looking at it wondering, ‘What is this?’, you would be forgiven for thinking it strange too. However we sometimes miss the meaning in the things that happen to us because they don’t appear in the way we expect. I would, as much as possible, like to keep to the spirit of the art journal I made and include even this strange one. If you are responding to the poems by making or doing something, perhaps you too are dissatisfied by the outcome. It is a challenge sometimes to let it be what it is, so perhaps returning to it later you might be surprised to see a depth you didn’t notice at first.
The round forms dominate the image, floating, it seems in a blue haze. The forms are in two halves, ‘answering each other in the mist’. Some of the forms, ‘swell out and fail as if a door were shut between me and the sound’. The blue haze at the bottom of the image might be our unconsciousness where much is darkness and confusion. We barely understand why we behave in the way we do and why we react emotionally to seemingly small events. We wake from dreams, sometimes afraid or grieving for something we feel we have lost or missed. This is an image of contrasts speaking to each other, of sorrow and joy, sleeping and waking, peace and pain. Are the strange round forms waiting to rise out of the blue of unconsciousness? What will lift them up to the light? ‘The moon is hid: the night is still’. Do you sense the stillness of the round forms that are perhaps brooding egg shapes, waiting for new birth? ‘Be still and know….’
Benediction
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.” (Luke 1:68)
