Advent 1, Hope: Already and not yet, by David Kornfield, Pittsburgh, PA

BUT JESUS will return and set everything right

Hebrews 9:28 Christ will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.

Revelation 1:7 Look! He comes with the clouds of heaven, and everyone will see him.

On days like today, with occasional sun breaking through clouds, I often say to Debbie, “It could be today!”

A person’s last words carry weight. How much more if he is the author and completer of human history? Of my story. Of your story. Of our story as the church of Jesus Christ. His last recorded words in the Gospels are: “Be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

There will come an end to the world as we know it. Advent recognizes this fact and gives us time to prepare our hearts for our Lord’s return. It’s a time of tension between:

1. His arrival as a baby and his imminent arrival as the King of Kings.

2. What we have already experienced of Christ and what is yet to be revealed.

3. The maturity we have already attained and what we still lack.

The world is lost in the commercial focus of Christmas. We must get “lost” in anticipation of the imminent arrival of our King of Kings.

We live in the space between what Jesus has already done and what He will do. He has already performed miracles in our lives, our marriages, our families and our churches. AT THE SAME TIME, we deeply need Him to become real and present to us again today.

We honor these four weeks of Advent, celebrating Christ’s Incarnation as a tiny, totally dependent infant and his arrival in each of our hearts. At the same time, let us cry out, asking that he arrive for each of us in a new way, to transform what is still missing within us during this in-between time. Let us live fully in the revival and anointing he has already given us, even while we stretch forward to the greater revival and anointing that we so desperately need.

Lord, break in me everything that needs to be broken.

Heal in me everything that needs to be healed.

Fill in me everything that needs to be filled.

Anoint in me everything that needs to be anointed.

“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

An anchor for our souls

New birth into a living hope

1 Peter 1:23 (Titus 3:5) Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Romans 6:18-19 It is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.

So, I’m curious: Have you tried the “new song” idea from my last blog—applying praise to whatever is going on in your life today? I would love to know! I sang a “new song” as I found reasons to praise God as our family absorbs the reality and implications of our six-year-old grandson’s Celiac Disease diagnosis.

I’m quite excited about this understanding of “new song,” in part because it takes me back to a vow I made to the Lord while Karis and I were jetting to Pittsburgh from South Bend in the middle of the night in response to the first intestinal transplant call she was ready to consider.

I vowed to find something to praise God for every day of this upcoming adventure. I had no idea at the time how life- and hope-giving that practice would be. Keeping that vow forced me back to the Lord time after time when otherwise I could have floundered in the excruciating disappointments and reversals we experienced. Hope became for me–for us–a lifeline, an anchor, a safety rail, a source of strength for not giving up as Karis faced death day after day after day. I am deeply grateful to the Holy Spirit for prompting me to make that vow.

There are so many wonderful references to hope in the New Testament that I had trouble choosing, even from the book of Hebrews. The Greek words translated as hope are elpis (noun) and elpizo (verb), from the root elpo. They mean to anticipate (usually with pleasure), to trust, and to expect with confidence (and the corresponding nouns).

Peter emphasizes the fact that our hope is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus, whose victory over his own death extends to us in ours. That’s why we don’t grieve when a loved one dies or in thinking about our own mortality with the same despair as those without the hope of new life after death (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

In thinking about this, I remember Karis’s brilliant smile after she wrote in big scrawly letters with her left hand, “I love ____” each one of us. At the end she wrote, “Call the doctor. I can’t breathe,” just as a team burst into her ICU room to induce her last coma to give time for the antiviral to work (it didn’t, but this gave our family time to gather and to prepare ourselves as well as we could for her death). I believe Karis knew she was going Home, which we learned later through her journals she had been pleading with God to allow her to do.

This isn’t Jesus’s tomb, but it is a preserved tomb and round stone from the first century, like his might have been. Thanks to Marilyn Chislaghi for permission to use her photo taken in Israel.

Living hope: an empty tomb. A brilliant smile. An anchor for our souls through terrible times.

The Anchor Holds, by Ray Boltz

All praise

But God names us his heirs

1 Peter 1:3-5 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his great mercy we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.

Psalm 16:5 Lord, you alone are my inheritance.

Sometimes I catch myself so looking forward to seeing Karis again and meeting our son Michael in Heaven that I have to ask myself, “Am I more excited about seeing Karis and Michael than you, Lord?”

He responds, “Don’t worry. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and! Forever!” I’m quite sure the glory of the Lord will be so overwhelming there will be no chance of lesser loves usurping his place.

Indeed, all praise belongs to him. Look at all Peter includes in these few lines as reasons for our praise. Great three-point sermon, Peter!

We have been born again. The Greek word is anagennao. It means a change from one state of being to another. It’s the word Jesus used in his conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 to describe spiritual rebirth. Peter uses it again twenty verses later: For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word (logos) of God (see John 1:1-5).

Because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Bodily resurrection to life after having been dead (anastasis) is God’s promise to us as well. Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back (1 Corinthians 15:23).

*Bloom #6 of Dan and April’s wedding orchid’s rebirth* *delighted us on Karis’s birthday yesterday.*

We live with great expectation. Indeed! Elpis means hope, looking forward to something with confident expectation. As each day speeds by and I see old age on the horizon (still very distant, of course), this is huge reason for praise. Our spiritual salvation—what we experience now—will one day express itself in new bodies that neither sicken nor sorrow nor age nor die.

We have a priceless inheritance. Here on earth, our bodies “keep the score” of the abuses and traumas we suffer. In Heaven, our new bodies will register the delight of unspoiled LIFE, beyond the reach of change and decay. Won’t it be fun to see the people who have gone before us as their true selves, healed from what they suffered—and inflicted on others—here on earth?!

It’s (almost) enough to be happy about growing older, if that’s what it takes to receive our inheritance.

All praise to God!

As I’ve written this post, a dear friend sits with a close friend of hers in the sacred transition space between earth and Heaven. I thought I would post again on Monday, but to honor this moment, I’ll go ahead to post it today.