God's Hidden Timing

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. (Luke 1:26-27) 

Advent begins not with spectacle, but with hidden timing—God waiting for faith to mature in quiet places before acting openly. Elizabeth stayed in seclusion for five months. The passage begins by drawing our attention to God’s timing: “In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Mary.” There is something deliberate and revealing about this timing. God’s action with Mary seems responsive to Elizabeth’s long season of hidden waiting.

Perhaps Elizabeth waited to see if this baby would survive. Perhaps she had known miscarriages before and wanted to confirm God’s word to her while living quietly with silent Zechariah. Both of them waited—maybe with doubts in their hearts. Perhaps they were familiar with this kind of anxiety and had learned disappointment from it. In the quiet, God seems to allow Elizabeth’s faith and hope to ripen, both for herself and for her coming meeting with Mary.

Elizabeth’s recorded words may reflect a slow recognition of God’s faithfulness to Zechariah. They may be the joy that finally emerged at the end of her seclusion: “In these days of seclusion he has shown his grace to me!” Now she could step into the joy of pregnancy rather than hide with the pain of loss from friends and family.

At this sacred moment in Elizabeth’s life, God sends Gabriel to Mary with both warning and hope. Mary is told that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her—echoing the Spirit hovering over the face of the deep at the beginning of creation. A new creation is beginning. God is gentle with his prophets and his people. He speaks with them before he acts, preparing them for what is to come. Mary’s faith was not blind; it was invited, informed, and sustained by God’s words to her.

Gabriel also gives Mary a gift of confirmation and companionship: “Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age.” Another miraculous birth. God strengthens Mary’s faith not only with promises, but with signs, and not only with signs, but with companions. She would not walk this path alone. 

Advent often unfolds this way for us as well—faith growing quietly, out of view, before joy is ready to be shared. Much of God’s work in us happens before we feel permitted to rejoice. 

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Prayer

Lord, you favored Mary with clear communication and faithful companions on her path of obedience. Favor us as well. We need your voice to make sense of our lives, and we need companions for the journey we walk with you. Meet us in our hidden seasons. Open our ears to your words and our eyes to the friends you place along our way. Amen.

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Advent Action

You may not see an angel this season, but today listen carefully for God’s message through your conversations and encounters. Ask God to open your eyes to companions who are walking the Way of Jesus alongside you. Consider writing down one moment today when God’s message came through another person.

Joy in the Lord: Deep Satisfaction

What we all need is this:

Find deep satisfaction in Jesus -
  his words, his works, his ways,
  how he is with us.
I just want to say it again: Enjoy him!

Then allow that deep satisfaction
  to gentle your words and actions
  so they surprise everyone, even you!
And now you see the Lord Jesus,
  gentle and humble, is near
  and is your Teacher in all things.

So learn to hear his gentle teaching
  over your anxious, hurried thoughts and feelings
  by asking for his help with everything
  and gratefully knowing he will help you as he has before.

Then you will find you are not
  easily alarmed or offended
  but completely at ease at God's side
  with the sure defense of Jesus
    against all attacks on your heart and mind.

(Meditation on Philippians 4:4-7)

Eternal Life: One Vine

One Vine.
One garden.
One Gardner.

Jesus tells us how it is
more than what we should do.

One True Vine.
The universe is just the garden
made by the Gardner
to house the Vine.

Reality unfolds.
We are branches
connected to the True Vine
or not.

Jesus's words go out
pruning some branches
for fruition,
cutting others off.

How so?

For some, his teaching draws them
into friendship,
into familial intimacy,
into joyful obedience,
bringing the sap of life.

For others, just hearing about him
makes them harder,
withered,
dry,
bringing resentment
against him
and those who follow him.

The Gardner
prunes back the branches
to produce the fruit
of joyful obedience.

Without joy
obedience is mean
hypocrisy.
Without obedience
joy is empty
sentiment.

We are the branches,
connected to Christ
in friendship
more than servitude.
Without such friendship
there can be no fruit,
no joyful obedience.

The Father's words
ring true in him,
showing us what
he has meant to say
all along:
"I love my Son.
He loves me.
Join our family."

This family,
these intimate friends,
gather around the vine,
connected
through their connection,
loving
as they are loved.
All life
and resources
and growth
coming from the Vine
planted by the Gardner.

One True Vine.
One Gardner.
One garden.

(Mediation on John 15)

Restore the Joy

THE JOY OF SALVATION

Let's say that joy can be understood as a deep sense of well-being.  Such a feeling cannot be merely a feeling, but is also an persistent thought as well as a recurrent choice.  It is not merely cosmetic, like the seed in shallow soil that showed joy at the message of God's kingdom, but quickly withered when trouble and persecution came in Jesus's parable of the seed and the sower.  Like a house built on rock instead of sand, the storms blow over it and by it, but do not blow it down.

Let's say that salvation can be understood as deliverance.  Being delivered implies slavery or captivity or prison.  I am caught with no way of escape.  I am locked away with no hope of freedom.  Then my freedom is purchased, my debt is paid, or my sentence removed.  I am moved from the realm of darkness and hopelessness into a bright, new place of hope.  My prospects are open.  My life stands before me.  I am saved.  I am delivered.

The joy of deliverance then is the sense of well-being that comes from or belongs to life that is free, open, and safe.  This is where forgiveness leads.  This is the resting place of each person who is redeemed or bought back by God.  The prayer for restoration is a prayer for continued fellowship with God when I have left him.  The return of the prodigal son is a picture of such restoration.  It is not merely a recognition of some transaction that takes place on my account to "pay for my sin."  It is coming home to the Father.

THE ROAD HOME

The road home has some landmarks that are familiar to those who travel in this way.  "Hide your face from my sin" (Psalm 51:9) is the request for relief from guilt.  The NET Bible notes that this means, "Do not hold me accountable for my sin."  Take no notice of it.  Do not bring it up before me.  Can God really do that?  Yes, he can.  Yes, he must.  Forgiveness must be freely given to be forgiveness at all.  God is fully willing to forgive.

The barriers belong to me.  Guilt and shame make it impossible to receive forgiveness.  I'm too busy beating myself up to lift my face up for mercy.  Guilt and shame lead to a warped picture of God as one who is tight-fisted and "reaps where he does not sow."  The first hill on the road to forgiveness is releasing my sin to God for him to hide and blot out.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10)  A clean heart and a right spirit come from forgiveness.  God must not only forgive, but enable me to receive such forgiveness.  A clean heart is one that has one pure motive.  A right spirit is pointed in the right direction.  Such intention comes from God.  I cannot merely make it happen; I must humbly receive it.  The gate is small, but God can bring me through it.

"Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me." (Psalm 51:11)  The creation of a new heart comes from God's grace present in his Spirit.  He grants that I can remain with him and be drawn to him through his Spirit.  The means by which God renews my spirit is by his Spirit.  A right spirit is aligned with his Spirit.  Apart from him I can do nothing.  Again, I ask, I wait, I receive.   The road is narrow, but his leading is sure.

SIN LEFT BEHIND

"Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me." (Psalm 51:12)  I am never merely saved from guilt and shame even though they are the front door of my salvation.  Salvation is about a new creation, a clean heart and a right spirit.  Salvation is about living in the presence of God, indwelt and guided by his Holy Spirit.  Such a salvation makes war on more that guilt.  I am saved from my sin.  The joy of salvation is sin left behind.  The joy of salvation is a heart that does not want sin.  The joy of salvation is a spirit that chooses the right way.  The joy of salvation creates a willing spirit that sustains me through trial and temptation.

What does this all look like?  It is hard work, but not the kind I expect.  I am not asked to make up for my sin.  I am not asked to forgive so I will be forgiven.  I am asked to let go of guilt and shame through trust.  I am asked to seek out the God who forgives, strengthens, and leads through prayer and discipline.  I am asked to exchange my heart for a new one that beats with God's, the heart of Jesus.  I lay aside the work of trying to make up for my sins and accept the work of being with God every moment or every day.

Lord, I deviate easily.  I find myself trying to manage my sin instead of giving it up and following you.  Give me the will to let go.  Give me the love to run after you.  Amen.

Satisfied with God Alone

Be still and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:10)

I will be satisfied as with the richest of foods,
  with singing lips, my mouth will praise you. (Psalm 63:5)

I have told you this that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:11)

One summer a number of years ago, I came home from college to spend time with my family.  I loved to be at "home" with my parents.  I was enjoying a few days without work before the new semester began, I think.  I enjoyed eating there, sleeping there, playing games with my family, and also taking walks next to White Rock Canyon.

Somehow there was peace for me in the vastness of that canyon, especially in the morning.  The smell of the sagebrush and juniper (I've never been allergic to it) and the morning light has always brought a rest for me that I could never find elsewhere.  I was going to miss that place going back to the city for school, so I intended on taking in all of the space and quiet I could from the canyon that morning.

Instead, I found myself restless.  I missed Dawn, who at that time was my girlfriend.  Although I had been disturbed at missing girlfriends before, I had never really had them intrude on this time and place of sanctuary at the canyon's edge.  I had never quite had that sense of dissatisfaction that I had in being apart from her.  She was going to be going to a different university this semester and I was not going to see her when I returned to school.

This dissatisfaction took me by surprise.  I was alarmed by it.  I even wondered if it was a bad sign to have the longing for her ruin what had always been so precious and peaceful to me.  I was not aware of it then, but God spoke to me plainly.  He told me that without her, I could not enjoy the things I used to enjoy.  I think this was the moment I realized I would marry Dawn.  It wasn't so much that I couldn't live without her, but that I knew that my life was for sharing with her and giving to her as long as I was able to do so.

This morning I was drawn back into that moment by realizing that dissatisfaction was the reason for much of my restlessness in life.  I was made to share my life with someone else and give my life to another.  Dawn is part of that ache, but it goes deeper.  I have moments in which I am overcome with such satisfaction.  After a job well done, when I see my children laughing together, when I go to bed and hold Dawn close on a cold night, when I smell the rain in the trees when I go outside in the morning, I have moments of peace and contentedness.  But like that morning, the moments are, at best, just moments and fade quickly in the light of a deeper dissatisfaction.

I find that I am restless.  I go from moment to moment of rest and joy only to find them slipping from my fingers.  The moments not only fade with time, they fade with use.  The law of diminishing returns seems to play out with most experiences.  There is a desire for something new and often something more.   Contrary to my natural expectations and usual experience, though, the way of peace and joy is not primarily made up of what is new and more, but the enjoyment of what is common and less.

The newness and abundance must come from somewhere other than the experiences themselves.  They come from finding that true desire, that place where I can give and share.  Other people provide an example of how such giving and sharing is found in relationship, but there is a profound dissatisfaction at the depth and ability of other people to be a part of this in my life.  I have had to learn that their own incompleteness keeps them from being that place, that person that I need.  I see that incompleteness in myself as well as I live with and love my wife and family.  I cannot be their joy and peace any more than any other person or experience they may have.

I think I am tempted like most people to live with this as a matter of fact and try to get all of the moments I can as I go through life.  This has led me into problems of using people as things to get those moments as well as seeking experiences that are more and more.  Paul talks about this sort of life when he writes

So I say to you and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking.  They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God by the ignorance that is in them.  Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more. (Ephesians 4:17-19)

It seems kind of rough, but I have found myself in this cycle many times.  I have found myself with "futile thinking" seeking after God in the wrong way and in the wrong places.

This morning I was not so much filled with dissatisfaction as with joy in knowing that I do not have to live quite so restlessly.  I can live with God, giving to him and sharing with him.  Such a relationship has enabled all things in my life - even the bad things - to become new and more than they are in themselves.  Joy - a pervading sense of well-being according to Dallas Willard - can come in the morning and follow me throughout my day as I give my days to God and share them with him.  Through this relationship, God shows  me that what I need is not so much more experiences in number or intensity, but more of certain experiences in depth and enjoyment.  Only in remaining with him can I escape the law of diminishing returns, because only he is infinite and eternal in his being.  He has made me eternal so I can enjoy his infinitude.

I see this as the only way to navigate this life because as my body gives out and as I go through more experiences in life, I must either become more and more dissatisfied with life because I cannot get as much out of it, or I must find a way to enjoy less and less more and more deeply.  Only through the Spirit with my spirit can such a life be possible. May God save me from "futile thinking" that seeks to live without him.  I want to start and end my day seeking my satisfaction in him alone and letting the experiences and people in my life color and fill in that contentment.  I pray with Thomas a Kempis:

Grant me, most sweet and loving Jesus, to rest in Thee above every creature, above all health and beauty, above all glory and honour, above all power and dignity, above all knowledge and skilfulness, above all riches and arts, above all joy and exultation, above all fame and praise, above all sweetness and consolation, above all hope and promise, above all merit and desire, above all gifts and rewards which Thou canst give and pour forth, above all joy and jubilation which the mind is able to receive and feel. (The Imitation of Christ, Chapter 21)