"A voice of one calling: "In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God." Isaiah 40:3
This week in Advent, we light the Peace candle at night, and we ponder the words of the Prophets who foretold the birth of Christ, and told us of the need to prepare a way for the Lord.
A quick check of the news shows that peace can be hard to find.
Massacres. Protests and riots. Family members killing one another. Persecution and hatred in so many guises. Evil gleefully seems to romp through the world.
It's no wonder we long for peace. We want to know that the horrors will cease, that the unthinkable will become the undo-able. We want nightmares just to be bad dreams, or scary moves on the screen....not what is lived out around the world, and in our country.
So we wait, and we pray, and we struggle for peace. For the surety of peace that only Christ can bring, that only His hand can bestow.
We understand lighting the candle of peace with our prayers.
It's the "preparing the way of the Lord" part that gets so many of us.
Because that involves repentance. And we don't like that word.
Repentance means we have to acknowledge we're in sin. We'd rather just pretend that "you're fine, I'm fine...everyone got the story?" But we're not. We're selfish and sometimes cruel, we can be greedy or gossips. We can love to condemn other people and hold them to standards that we ourselves can't live up to. We so often secretly hate, and envy, and we're not as into that forgiving other people thing as we're supposed to be.
We all have things we need to repent of. Or...is it just me?
I'm impatient and not as caring as I should be all the time. Sometimes I'm so worried about pleasing everyone around me that I neglect my heath, or worse..neglect my time with God. He gets shuffled in my need to please. Forgiving people takes work for me, I can be like a dog with a bone, cherishing a grudge, and I have to force myself to pray, "God, this isn't healthy, You have to help me with this, to forgive. I cannot do it on my own." I can be too quick to be defensive, and I can use that defensiveness to wound others as a reflex, even when deep down I know they weren't trying to hurt me at all. I'm broken and fallen, and in need of the Lord.
My heart has twisted, thorny paths within it, it is dry and parched as a desert and I must prepare a path for the Lord.
I need this season of Advent, like I need Lent, to remind me to lay forth my transgressions and turn from them. By facing the sins I struggle with and laying them before both the manger and the cross, I turn them over to Christ, asking forgiveness and aid to help be free of them. And the mercy is, as the prayer throughout Advent, "O Come Lord" is truly spoken...He answers and comes in compassion and love.
And my thorny patches are pulled, His Word waters my heart, His love gentles my tempests, and the paths in my heart are cultivated.
Prepare the way of the Lord.
Search your hearts, my friends, would the Lord find smooth paths to walk upon? Or is your heart scattered with boulders and thorns, an obstacle course where little can grow?
We want peace, in our lives and in our world, but we cannot have the true measure of peace in either place until Christ rules and sin in all its forms is defeated.
This world, which so badly needs peace, will only have it in moments and glimpses for now. Only the Father knows when the Second Coming, the Second Advent, will be; when all that is wrong on earth will be set right, all knees will bow and Christ will reign. Only then will this whole world know peace. That doesn't mean we should not work for justice, for peace, but do not let yourselves be troubled that no lasting peace is found. Only Christ will give us that, and He has promised that He shall.
In our own lives it can be different. We can have peace within our hearts, if Christ presides there. He is not a cruel tyrant, He does not chain us with un-keepable laws and heartless tasks. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. His living presence within our lives brings joy, peace, compassion and mercy, and we feel these virtues planted within our hearts by the Holy Spirit take fruit and blossom in our lives.
But first though....we must do as the Prophets throughout the ages told us to do; we must make a way in the wilderness (of our hearts), we must prepare a path, we must repent. For repenting turns our hearts to Christ; and as we call and beseech Him, He will come to us. It is not so great a task, beloved friends, to look full onto our sins and name them to God as they are, laying them at the Cross in repentance. We exchange something heavy and hateful, the burden of those unconfessed sins, for the beauty of having a heart made ready for Christ.
Prepare the way of the Lord.
Be blessed, my friends, and may you be a blessing unto someone else,
-Beth Haynes Butler
This week in Advent, we light the Peace candle at night, and we ponder the words of the Prophets who foretold the birth of Christ, and told us of the need to prepare a way for the Lord.
A quick check of the news shows that peace can be hard to find.
Massacres. Protests and riots. Family members killing one another. Persecution and hatred in so many guises. Evil gleefully seems to romp through the world.
It's no wonder we long for peace. We want to know that the horrors will cease, that the unthinkable will become the undo-able. We want nightmares just to be bad dreams, or scary moves on the screen....not what is lived out around the world, and in our country.
So we wait, and we pray, and we struggle for peace. For the surety of peace that only Christ can bring, that only His hand can bestow.
We understand lighting the candle of peace with our prayers.
It's the "preparing the way of the Lord" part that gets so many of us.
Because that involves repentance. And we don't like that word.
Repentance means we have to acknowledge we're in sin. We'd rather just pretend that "you're fine, I'm fine...everyone got the story?" But we're not. We're selfish and sometimes cruel, we can be greedy or gossips. We can love to condemn other people and hold them to standards that we ourselves can't live up to. We so often secretly hate, and envy, and we're not as into that forgiving other people thing as we're supposed to be.
We all have things we need to repent of. Or...is it just me?
I'm impatient and not as caring as I should be all the time. Sometimes I'm so worried about pleasing everyone around me that I neglect my heath, or worse..neglect my time with God. He gets shuffled in my need to please. Forgiving people takes work for me, I can be like a dog with a bone, cherishing a grudge, and I have to force myself to pray, "God, this isn't healthy, You have to help me with this, to forgive. I cannot do it on my own." I can be too quick to be defensive, and I can use that defensiveness to wound others as a reflex, even when deep down I know they weren't trying to hurt me at all. I'm broken and fallen, and in need of the Lord.
My heart has twisted, thorny paths within it, it is dry and parched as a desert and I must prepare a path for the Lord.
I need this season of Advent, like I need Lent, to remind me to lay forth my transgressions and turn from them. By facing the sins I struggle with and laying them before both the manger and the cross, I turn them over to Christ, asking forgiveness and aid to help be free of them. And the mercy is, as the prayer throughout Advent, "O Come Lord" is truly spoken...He answers and comes in compassion and love.
And my thorny patches are pulled, His Word waters my heart, His love gentles my tempests, and the paths in my heart are cultivated.
Prepare the way of the Lord.
Search your hearts, my friends, would the Lord find smooth paths to walk upon? Or is your heart scattered with boulders and thorns, an obstacle course where little can grow?
We want peace, in our lives and in our world, but we cannot have the true measure of peace in either place until Christ rules and sin in all its forms is defeated.
This world, which so badly needs peace, will only have it in moments and glimpses for now. Only the Father knows when the Second Coming, the Second Advent, will be; when all that is wrong on earth will be set right, all knees will bow and Christ will reign. Only then will this whole world know peace. That doesn't mean we should not work for justice, for peace, but do not let yourselves be troubled that no lasting peace is found. Only Christ will give us that, and He has promised that He shall.
In our own lives it can be different. We can have peace within our hearts, if Christ presides there. He is not a cruel tyrant, He does not chain us with un-keepable laws and heartless tasks. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. His living presence within our lives brings joy, peace, compassion and mercy, and we feel these virtues planted within our hearts by the Holy Spirit take fruit and blossom in our lives.
But first though....we must do as the Prophets throughout the ages told us to do; we must make a way in the wilderness (of our hearts), we must prepare a path, we must repent. For repenting turns our hearts to Christ; and as we call and beseech Him, He will come to us. It is not so great a task, beloved friends, to look full onto our sins and name them to God as they are, laying them at the Cross in repentance. We exchange something heavy and hateful, the burden of those unconfessed sins, for the beauty of having a heart made ready for Christ.
Prepare the way of the Lord.
Be blessed, my friends, and may you be a blessing unto someone else,
-Beth Haynes Butler
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