Widows at Christmas

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Second Friday – Christmas Fluff

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on December 9, 2016
Posted in: Advent 2016, devotional life, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

 

christkindlsmarkt kirche.jpg

 

 

I have on my desktop screen a beautiful picture of the Nüremburg Christkindlesmarkt. It was taken from a window several stories above the marketplace and on an overcast, icy day. The rooftops of the little booths are powdered with snow. The gloom of twilight is descending in a shimmery deep-blue haze, but the bright lights in all the vendor tents are like the diamonds on the lapis of a Faberge’ egg. The glow that shines on the church spires and from apartment windows and business store fronts make a halo around the scene. It looks cold, freezy-chilly-frosty cold, but I want to be there once again, strolling with the other shoppers, filling my basket with handmade ornaments and packages of fragrant Lebkuchen and chocolates and candles for the big day.

 

It’s all fluff. We know it is. Everyone is drinking Gluhwein or hot chocolate, ooh-ing and aah-ing over the craftsmanship at certain stops along the way, but it’s all Christmas fluff. The children always want the silliest, the most ill-fitting or likely-to-be-broken-before-we-get-home items, but we wouldn’t miss this.

 

Where’s the joy?  It’s fluffy. It isn’t Christmas …  Is it?

 

Perhaps there is something about the very fluffiness of Christmas that speaks to our hearts of something very real and very important. We hear those good sermons about how poor Mary and Joseph were, how lowly Jesus’ birthplace. True, being born in a stable is unusual and unfortunate as we see it, but for all we know, Joseph might have been a man of means; probably the village carpenter made fairly good money. Perhaps he was well off!  There just wasn’t any room in the inn!

 

Still, an inauspicious beginning for the Savior of the world, except for the angels filling the skies, singing the glories of the Father! And the star that turned on to announce the day. And the Magi, traveling at great expense to find Him and worship Him. And the shepherds! Lowly again, certainly … but when a company of men leave their livelihood to find and pay homage to a baby, lying in a hay manger, then depart, astonished and full of all they saw and heard …. Well, let’s say this. God is the greatest storyteller, ever. First He makes the story come true, then He tells it. He knew what we would make of it … and even plastic nativity figures retell the account world-over.

 

Back to Nüremburg. Do all these vendors and trinkets cheapen that night, this season? Not to mention the trees in our homes and the wreaths on our doors and the candles on our tables and even the fluffy gifts in the sparkly paper, waiting to be unwrapped!

 

This is what I think. If I rejoice in my Savior and my salvation every day that I live, my celebration can be Advent chains made from sheets of red and green construction paper (and it has been,) or sugar cookies for a school party, or fancy soaps to a nursing home; it can be reindeers, snowmen, tinsel, and a star on top, because this is a party, and for the pure in heart, it’s hard to make this one not-holy. There is even an enormous Christmas tree in mostly Arab Nazareth. This party is started! None of this is the fullness of joy, but we have that already.

 

Even before we did, Christmas warmed our hearts. This is the fluff that expresses that fullness, even the over-the-top spectacle of that otherwise quiet night. I really like it.

 

 

 

Second Wednesday – Disspelling Darkness

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on December 7, 2016
Posted in: Advent 2016, devotional life, personal devotion, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

438px-Brest_lamplighter

 

One of the challenges of good blogging is to keep all entries short, pithy, and appealing. Quite an undertaking, when we deal with subjects as vast as eternity and as important as the life and health of our souls!   How about this excerpt from Ephesians 5  …

 

. . . once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light . . . 

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 

. . . when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.   Therefore it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” (Ephesians 5:6-14)

 

 

Because, truly, our goal is to make this a season of watching and prayerfully anticipating the coming of the Lord, the celebration of His birth and, more emphatically, of His reign in us, we have to address the darkness as well as glorying in His light.

 

Let’s pray and rejoice, with the striking of the match each evening, that we may reprove every dark place that remains in us, be it as small as a mustard seed. Oh, yes, faith is the seed of which the Lord spoke, but seeds of regret, bitterness, fear, dissipation, and unbelief grow, too, unless they are uprooted. If even one of our “besetting sins” were to be choked out, even now, our holidays – all our days – would brighten.

 

We aren’t afraid of what we see in our hearts, for the debt of our sin is paid and newness of life has come. We fear God, and we put off the “old man” for the sake of the life of Christ. We name the dark corners and call them what they are – self-pity, unforgiveness, selfishness, greed . . . nothing, nothing that the Lord hasn’t dispelled before.

 

As we settle into each Advent day or evening, we don’t hide our faults in the gaiety or the rush of the season. We just honestly say, we surrender our darkness and repent of our pride. We will have done with sin, the very sin we know we’ve sheltered, and we will walk in light.

 

 

“But if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from sin.” (1 John 1:7)

 

 

This is walking with God. This is bearing the fruit of light. This is going out to meet the Bridegroom, our wicks trimmed, and taking the fullness of His Spirit with us!

 

There … how’d I do? Great big subject … one small encouragement.

 

 

Lamp lighter in Brest, Belarus

Yogi555, by permission

Second Monday – Our Calling Card

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on December 5, 2016
Posted in: Advent 2016, devotional life, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

561px-andrea_del_sarto_-_annunciation_detail_-_wga0413.jpg

 

 

Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes.

While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” When Jesus had said this, he departed and hid himself from them. ( John 12:35-36 )

 

 

What was it about Mary? How was it that she was predisposed to obey the Lord?  To another woman, the Angel might have been relating the impossible framed within the reprehensible, but Mary was not that woman, and it was to her that Gabriel was sent.

 

Here is light for today’s path, a great reality to celebrate as we ignite our Advent candle this day … There is no greater illumination for our souls than to answer “Yes, Lord” when He speaks or sends His Word.

 

Let us remember that the angel Gabriel’s “explanation” to Zechariah’s “how can I be sure” (Luke 1:11-20) was . . . I am Gabriel; I stand in the Presence of God!   Oh, I love that so much!   WHAT a calling card!

 

The oil that saturates the wick of our brightness is the glory of a “willing heart to sustain us” (Psalm 51:12.)  Mary was willing to obey, and when the Lord’s messenger came (quite obviously the Lord’s messenger, to Mary’s willing heart, though more than a little breath-taking in appearance), she asked “How?” not “How can I know for sure?”

 

Let us commit ourselves to obedience this day and in this season. Jesus told us that the one who will obey shall know. (John 7:17) It seldom works the other way around with God. Let us see how often we can answer the promptings of God with these words, “Yes, Lord!” After all, how can we know what can only be seen through faith in the first place? The Lord is always doing a new thing, constantly, and nobody has ever seen it before.

 

We can begin by saying, “Yes, Lord, we will answer Yes!” and oh!, that will result in a merry … Mary … spirit this Advent tide and beyond.

 

Lord God, the Light which is Christ is the radiance of our souls. Forgive our fear of obedience. Forgive all the ways we have held tight to our failures, especially those times when we thought we were doing right and everything seemed to turn out wrong. Forgive the times when we quit and gave up too soon, and forgive those times when we just didn’t know You or wait upon You in the first place! Almighty God! Your ways are high, but they can be known by those who seek You.

             We can obey, O Lord, because we can love. We choose to walk in that light, as Jesus is in the Light.   We are Your people, who stand in Your Presence, and we can obey You.

 

detail of the Anunciation

Andres del Sarto, 1528

Wikipedia, public domain

First Saturday – Wait Wisely

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on December 4, 2016
Posted in: Advent 2016, devotional life, personal devotion, the image of Christ, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

images

 

The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you by night; but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.

Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.

Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land for ever, the shoot of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified.

The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the LORD; in its time I will hasten it. 

 

Isaiah 60:19-22

 

 

Waiting… Waiting…

 

 

Advent is a season of watchful waiting and anticipation, but we do well to make certain that we know what it is that we await. We must be certain that we do not spend our lives waiting for what is now here at hand.

 

 

Our brightness is now. Jesus is not scheduled to become our light, later! Goodness, we would be in the most serious trouble if His Spirit was planning to come to us … in time … eventually. No! It is by the Holy Spirit of God that we are born again to newness of life.

 

 

If we were to leave this planet before the New Year, it would be that same Spirit who would take us with Him, one with Him, in His return to the Presence of God in heaven.  It is that Holy Spirit, that nearness and that Life of God, by which Jesus assured us that He would, following His death and resurrection, come again to us in this life, here, and now, so that we may live. (John 14:15-18)

 

By His Word and His redemption, our sun will no more go down … what an Advent celebration that is!

 

                       

 

photo by Andre’ Karwath

Wikicommons, by permission

December 2 – The Righteous Branch

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on December 2, 2016
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

CSIRO_ScienceImage_11626_Barley_root.jpg

“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring forth for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’

Jeremiah 33:14-16

 

One of the chief glories of Advent is the opportunity it affords us to see how perfectly ready was the hour when Jesus came to us in the flesh.   When we read the prophecies that were fulfilled at His birth, as we see how the Father brought innumerable avenues into convergence in a stable in Bethlehem, it is astonishing to us in its fulness.

We cannot see the clock ticking down, ready to strike the hour, but we know that it did, even to the appearance of a star that turned on to attract the attention of the Magi and give them time to travel and reach the Child and His family some time later, and just at precisely the right moment.  With their arrival and their conference with Herod, the horrors came too, exactly as foretold.

Thousands of years pressing in upon one another, that the cry of the human heart might be answered. Few mortals have ever even known to ask for what we need most … we need to be “right with God.” In typical human-ness, men had been looking under every superstitious stone for a way to effect personal cleanness and freedom from guilt and to ward off evil, but to no avail. There is no righteousness, there is no cleanness apart from faith in the Promised One, the Root of David.   When we think of it, how could we imagine that God would splinter His person to fit into the doctrines of men. Please, no! He must then be Who He Is, One God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Almighty God, Majesty, Lord of All.  Merciful God.  Righteous One.  How could we hope in less than all that He is? That would, amazingly, be a false hope.

The very search away from God demonstrates how deeply we need His righteousness alone. May all the paths of our Christmas season and all those of the year ahead lead us into the perfections of Christ, into His faith and His love and His wisdom and His holiness. Further, we may rejoice that the time is right, just now, for each of singly and all of us together, if we will believe. This is the only time we have, and now is the hope of life eternal and of confidence in the hour of our death.

         Lord God, save us to the uttermost, that we may dwell securely in our souls as well as in our holiday homes. Save us to hope in you, for by your Word, those who hope will never be put to shame. Oh Righteous Branch, that we would bear fruit that remains, as foretold.  Amen.

 

a barley root

Mark Talbot, by permission, Wikipedia