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Time, time, time
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Third Week of Advent
Matthew 1:17
The total number of generations from Abraham to David is fourteen, and fourteen more generations from David to the Babylonian exile, and finally fourteen generations from the Babylonian exile to the Christ.
See what’s become of me, while I looked around for my possibilities … Paul Simon’s song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3nswy0LNsE ) rings out during these last days of autumn, the shortest days of the year, as the sky hangs onto the hazy shades of winter, day after day after everlasting day.
We arrive in this less than fully conscious form to greet the winter solstice, to watch the edge of Advent curl up toward Christmas and call for it to come, all this waiting nearly done.
Here for a few short weeks is a season when more of us than usual are more conscious than usual of the Big Perspective. Life is less puny, less pathetic, less personally offensive for some of us. Life is less greedy, less helplessly materialistic, less self-satisfied for others. We are all thrown together in this time-time-time-see-what’s-become-of-me pot. The longer view is visible, and it’s easier for us to at least glance over in that direction.
It’s like being Jewish, maybe, and tenderly holding the forty-two generations between Abraham and Jesus in the same way I hold my own life. Time helps us “do,” not “be,” and I’m aware of my being just now. The artificial separation between past and present drains away. We are all together, and we will always be all together.
This strange elusive oneness comes a little closer to the surface of my mind today than it did a month ago or will a month from now. That makes this time of year precious and priceless. We call it Advent, and we wait. And the waiting is coming to an end.
But we skip the waiting only at great risk to our eternal perspective.
Funny … “how my memory skips, looking over manuscripts, of unpublished rhyme.” Let me, Lord, do all my life in the name of the Lord Jesus. Pour the nectar of your acceptance over my regrets, my unfinished business, my failures. They are failures in my eyes only. You are as sure of my value as you are sure of your love. Let me know how true you are.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1312
