First Sunday of Advent, November 27, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Stand up, turn away from war, turn and worship the baby Jesus
Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.
And here we are – another year, another Advent. Another Advent, another Christmas. Another Christmas, another return of Jesus the baby to warm and convict our hearts. C. S. Lewis’ heart too, which is growing like that horse he wrote about in The Great Divorce:
Growing Wings by C. S. Lewis
Mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.
It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders – no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings – may even give it an awkward appearance.
Whoever possesses the Son of God lacks for nothing.
So now we put on our traveling clothes and head toward Bethlehem. Jerusalem is fine, for a dirty city, but Bethlehem is where the manger is, where Jesus lived for a couple of years, where the wise men were led to him by their star. It pulls me toward it as much as Jerusalem ever will.
The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it, many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.”
We ain’t gonna study war no more. Again, we make that vow, although again, it is broken the next day. Which is why Isaiah heard God say, “Destroy the instruments of death!”
Beat your swords into plowshares, and your spears into pruning hooks!
Let agriculture replace the science of war and death. Learn to grow and live, and start right now. O come, o come, Emmanuel.
One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they study war … no more. O house of Jacob, come! Let us walk in the light of the Lord.
This first Sunday of Advent, celebrated in Ukraine, in Russia, and around the world – this is the day that the Lord has made.
(Isaiah 2, Psalm 122, Romans 13, Psalm 85, Matthew 24)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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