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December 01, 2009
> 12:21 PM
advent 2 We're getting off to a slow start in our observation of Advent in the Creech household this year - too slow for me anyway. We have our new candles for the wreath. We have our new devotional book - Advent and Christmas with the Saints. This series of books has been good so far, no reason not to keep going with another one. They're sitting there together in the living room - not one candle yet lit, not one devotion yet read. We'll get to it - hopefully before Christmas Eve. The other day I got to e-talking with someone about what we're awaiting in Adent - liturgically, His first coming, or His second coming, at the end. The comment discussion got around to saying it was both, and it is. But I'm wondering now if there's another "coming" we don't anticipate enough. It's a little more esoteric than the first and the last, although integrally connected to both. It's His continual and progressive coming now, into our world and into our lives. This, I believe, is the most important coming of Jesus that we are to be awaiting, and working to cooperate with. It is the Kingdom of God now among us and within us. I've talked about this before, but the whole concept of "Kingdom" is really only an analogy used by God to communicate something bigger and deeper to us in our own language. It's not merely about the coming of an attitude in which we recognize God as a crowned "King" of some kind of bounded "kingdom." That's too small. It's a fine analogy, but I really believe He was/is getting to something much bigger there. Advent is really all about the Incarnation, as is Christmas. These are liturgical ways we have developed as the Church to help us navigate and appreciate the coming of God, of the fullness of His Life, into our world. The Incarnation is also not merely about God appearing among us as a man for 33 years and then returning on a cloud to heaven - so that now, in effect, the Incarnation went away with Him. Jesus was the first-born of many siblings, not the only-born. The Incarnation continues in us! The Life of God has entered us as we have come into union with Christ - through Him, with Him, in Him. So we continue to see it's effects in our own lives and in the world around us as we are being transformed into His very Image by the Lord, as we gaze on Him with unveiled faces (2 Cor. 3:18). So, we should anticipate and pray: Come now, Lord Jesus - not to end it all vindicate us, not to burn the sinful world up and lift us on high, but continually come, expand Your Presence in me. Fill us with Your Life and change us, and with us, everything and everyone we touch. Labels: advent, spiritual formation, theology 0 Comments:| permalink | e-mail me | 
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