First Wednesday of Advent: Wait–Read

December 3, 2013 Daniel Harris

Secondly. All who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in searching the Scriptures. - John Wesley

My first suggestion, which I made yesterday, on how to wait for God throughout Advent was through prayer. That probably didn't come as a surprise to anyone, and today's suggestion of reading the scripture is also unlikely to rock anyone's boat. "Pray and read the Bible" are the standard answers most of us have heard throughout our lives for how to seek God. Yet, as we consider these practices in the context of waiting on God, we might realize that we can do them in ways that either enable us to wait (by relinquishing the tight grip of control we like to attempt to maintain on our own lives) or that work against our skills in waiting (by making us hold on more tightly).

This dynamic may be easier to see when we consider the ways that we pray. Like we discussed yesterday, we often either pray out of a sincere desire to be in God's will, and at other times we pray out of a sincere desire for him to be in ours. Could it be that this issue of who is in control also affects the ways that we read the Bible?

I hope that at some point in your life you will follow one of the many plans available that gives you a schedule for reading through the Bible in a certain period of time. There are plans that take a year, while some take up to three years or even as short as ninety days. A huge benefit of following these plans is that by doing so we get an increased awareness of the overarching story of God's work in human history that takes place throughout the entire Bible.

My wife and I were following one of these plans a few years ago, and we both benefitted from doing so. However, she made an observation about reading that Bible that way that stood out to me: she said that there were repeated times when she was reading a passage and something stood out to her which made her want to spend more time in that passage and go further into its meaning, but she couldn't do so because she needed to keep up with the reading plan rather than taking any more time with the passage and falling behind. This points to something that can be a disadvantage in our normal ways of reading the Bible: they help us get a better grasp of the information that's there, but they often leave us in control of what happens between us and God through the Bible (or even relegate that control to "the plan") rather than increasing our ability to actually hear from God through the scriptures. Dallas Willard points out the tension when he says that our goal in reading the scriptures is not to get us all of the way through the Bible, but to get the Bible all of the way through us.

New Testament scholar Robert Mulholland gives us a powerful image for thinking about how we might come to the scriptures in a way that helps us to wait on God through them. In looking at a passage from Hebrews 4, which describes the word of God as "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart," The next verse describes what should be our posture before the word of God: "before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account."(1)

Mulholland explains that the term translated as "laid bare" is the same word that would have been used for an animal about to have its throat cut to be sacrificed, or for the defeated gladiator laid across the knee of the victor with throat exposed before the death blow. So, according to this, it might help get the point across to us if–the next time any of us read the Bible–we do so with our heads laid back and throat exposed, insisting that God, through the scriptures, can have his way with us.

How comfortable does that make you feel? I don't know about you, but if I think of reading the Bible during Advent, I tend to think of things like angels, stars, and happily expectant mothers. That's a far cry from what many of the Advent readings actually are and how we might go about reading them in a "giving myself over to God in a throat-exposed" kind of way.

In light of this, I'd like to suggest a way of reading the scripture for the remainder of Advent. From today through the rest of the series, I will list a set of four readings at the bottom of each day's post. These are the traditional Advent readings for each respective week from the Revised Common Lectionary. Here's what I suggest:

Read the four passages at least once each day during the week. This act of reading passages repeatedly points us in the direction of waiting on God through the scriptures. Whereas normally we shy away from re-reading anything we've read before in favor of moving on, reading this way can open us up to the Bible differently.
Notice your reaction to at least one of the readings. By reading repeatedly, you will likely have some kind of a reaction to at least one of the passages. You may be surprised by it, it may cause some kind of longing in you, or perhaps you find yourself being resistant to–or even disliking–something that one of the passages says. Pay attention to this as you read the passages each day.
Sometime near the end of the week, spend five to ten minutes asking God what it is about that passage that connects with your life. It's fine if you don't have any significant insights while doing so (remember–we're attempting to wait on God and give him the control rather than keeping it for ourselves), but it's likely that sometime during Advent, the Lord will lead you. It may be in obvious ways, or it may be in more subtle changes in your thinking, but waiting on God through the scriptures in this way will take its long-term effect on us.

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A Prayer for the Day:

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought us in safety to this new day: Preserve us with your mighty power, that we may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.*

Readings for the Week*:

*Prayers are from The Book of Common Prayer and readings are from the Revised Common Lectionary. (1) Hebrews 4:12-13, NRSV

First Tuesday of Advent: Wait–Pray

December 2, 2013 Daniel Harris

First, all who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the way of prayer. - John Wesley

I've noticed something about prayer over the past few years: sometimes we pray because we sincerely want to be in God's will, and at other times we pray because we sincerely want God to be in ours. I've done my share of each of these. There have been times when I have prayed with the deepest intention of being open to God and becoming more completely his. This isn't limited to praying about things going on in my own life, but can certainly include times when I pray for others. Though it isn't always the way we go about it, we can pray for others in a way that holds them before God, asking for his kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth in their lives, just as it is in heaven. Whether for myself or for others, the times when I have prayed in these ways could be described as seeking "God's will: nothing more, nothing less, nothing else."(1)

Then, of course, there have been plenty of other times when my praying has boiled down to trying really hard to convince God to give me something that I wanted (usually followed for a while by a lack of praying, because the request I had been making didn't come according to my terms). During these times, Richard Foster's words describe my prayer precisely: "Our needs, our wants, our concerns dominate our prayer experience. Our prayers are shot through with plenty of pride, conceit, vanity, pretentiousness, haughtiness, and general all-around egocentricity."(2)

I've heard people say that there is no bad way to pray, and generally I agree. So, despite how the previous paragraphs may appear, I do not mean to communicate that one of these kinds of prayer is good and the other one bad. Foster's point in describing the selfishness of our prayers is that we should lay them out before God without regard to their level of egocentricity, considering that we cannot go around selfish prayer, but that we must go through it in order to lay aside our own wills in favor of God's.

However, in light of the issue we discussed yesterday (that we don't like to wait, because we don't like to give up control), it's important for us to realize that while there may be no bad way to pray, some ways of praying are more helpful than others–particularly when it comes to how our aversion to waiting on God drives us to resist giving control to him. While we should indeed feel free to come to God honestly with our concerns without feeling any need to censor them, if we want to cultivate our ability to wait on God, we will need some practices that help us to intentionally surrender the illusion that we have total control over our lives and instead entrust ourselves to God and his kingdom.

For the remainder of this week, we will look at different practical ways that we can wait on God throughout the rest of Advent. While it may seem counter-intuitive to talk about waiting on God as doing things, much of Christian tradition insists on the wisdom of this approach. Waiting on God requires our intentional cooperation, and it's inevitable that if we don't decide now on some ways we will deliberately wait on God between now and Christmas, we will arrive on December 25th with souls prepared (or ill-prepared) to the same degree as they have been in the past.

So, for today's suggestion of how we might wait on God this Advent through prayer, I pass on a helpful approach from James Bryan Smith's great book, The Good and Beautiful Life, and you might want to try this at least once per week throughout the remainder of Advent(3):

Set aside ten to fifteen minutes.
Think about all of the things you might be anxious about.
Write them down in your journal or a notebook.
Ask what you can do to remedy each of these situations.
Make a note to yourself to do the things you can do.
Turn everything else over to God.
Write your request to God, and be specific.

Much of the point of waiting on God through these kinds of practices is that doing them helps put our lives into contact with God's kingdom. When we pray in this way, we can realize that our actions do not need to be done in our own strength, but that the things that have been worrying us are no threats whatsoever to God's kingdom, and therefore we too can safely entrust ourselves to him.

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A Prayer for the Day:

O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom: Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

*From The Book of Common Prayer (1) Danny E. Morris and Charles M. Olsen, Discerning God's Will Together: A Spiritual Practice for the Church (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1997) Kindle Edition, Location 1273. (2) Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) 9. (3) James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2009) 183-184.

First Monday of Advent: Why Waiting Isn't One of My Specialties

December 1, 2013 Daniel Harris

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. (Psalm 130:5-6, NIV)

Suggesting that Advent is about waiting––that it is a period of time for us to recognize the ways that the people of God have waited on God through the centuries, and for us to follow their lead and wait on God ourselves––is likely to raise our defenses in some ways. In conversation with others, I have never heard anyone respond to a question about what kind of things they like to do with an answer along the lines of, "One of my favorite hobbies is just...waiting on things." We view waiting as an interruption into our plans of how things should go. Our attitude toward waiting reminds me of a comment from my son when he was about three years old. He was playing with some toys in his room when I asked him to help me clean up some of the clothes he had scattered around on his floor. Without looking up from his toys, he said, "Sorry, that's not one of my specialties."

It's easy for us to react that way when we talk about waiting on God. Better to leave that kind of thing to the professionals, we think. Then, throw into the mix that this series of Advent devotionals has waiting as its theme, and I would be surprised if some of us have not already subconsciously decided that we may keep reading, but probably won't actually do anything that gets suggested as a way of waiting on God. Ruth Haley Barton observes, "Most of us are not very good at waiting. We want what we want, and we want it yesterday. We want it on our own terms, just like we envisioned it....When there is something we need, having to wait for it puts us in a position where we are not in control....This is a necessary and yet very humbling aspect of ordinary life and of the spiritual life."(1)

I think there's also another reason why none of us is eager to develop waiting as one of our specialties: when we talk about waiting on God, we may initially nod our heads in agreement while at the same time only having a hazy idea of how anyone might attempt it. We wonder, what exactly is it that we're supposed to do?

Fortunately, there is a specific, practical answer to that question, and we will spend the remainder of this week exploring it. My hope is that doing so will give each of us a concrete idea of how we could go about waiting on God, and hopefully even make a plan to do so for the rest of Advent. We'll get into some specifics over the next few days, but for now, this question might point us in a helpful direction:

If I were to shape the next twenty-four hours of my life in a way that fosters my love for God and for other people, what would I do?

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A Prayer for the Day:

O God, the King eternal, whose light divides the day from the night and turns the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep your law, and guide our feet into the way of peace; that, having done your will with cheerfulness while it was day, we may, when night comes, rejoice to give you thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

*From The Book of Common Prayer (1) Ruth Haley Barton, 2013 Advent Reflections.

First Sunday of Advent: Wait

November 30, 2013 Daniel Harris

What would it be like to awaken on Christmas morning and feel like your soul has been sufficiently prepared to celebrate the incarnation of the Son of God?

I can't say I know what that feels like yet. I've been better prepared some years than others, but overall, I've experienced the opposite of that well-preparedness too many times. Once most Christmases have come and gone, even though I've been mindful that an inescapable reminder of Jesus' birth is at the core of all of the hubbub, I've still had a sense that I missed the point of it all. More than once, I've felt like all of the parties, presents, decorations, movies, and cookies have ended up being kind of like hosting a celebration for someone and then forgetting to ever speak to the honoree at the actual event. Sometime during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, I end up wanting to utter a prayer along the lines of, "Sorry I missed you at the party we threw for you last week." Today I am realizing that if go about my preparation in the same way as usual this year, I will end up needing to say that prayer again.

I want this year to be different. By the time that we sing "Silent Night" in church on Christmas Eve, I want to be able to let the events of that holy night take their full intended effect upon how I choose to live each day. I want to look at my preschool-age children differently and marvel at the fact that God saw it fit to become one of them. I want to be attentive to God and those around me, staying calm and quiet enough to be able to block out the excess noise and distractions in order to love well anyone with whom I come into contact.

I guess what I want most of all is joy. I can look back at the way I have celebrated Christmas in the past, and while things have been fun, this year I'm less interested in more of the same and more interested in cultivating joy, a pervasive sense of well-being(1), because of the fact that the Lord has come and he indeed does rule the world with truth and grace.

I want to be better prepared for Christmas this year, but according to Christian tradition there's a very counter-cultural irony here: we will be better prepared for the Christmas season if we have the discipline to wait until it arrives, and it isn't here yet. It will be an aid to anyone's faith to realize that we have another way of marking time. We've been given a calendar by centuries of people who have sought to follow Christ closely, and for the purpose of developing our lives with God, I've come to find it to be a much more trustworthy way of looking at the year than unconsciously judging the beginning and end of Christmas by what happens in the stores and on TV. In contrast to the culture around us (where I saw Christmas items on display in early October and the season will be over by December 26, at the latest), this traditional Christian calendar insists: It isn't yet Christmas. It's Advent.

I believe that the more attention we pay to that, the better chance we give ourselves to have the kind of deeply good Christmas we really want. In other words, if I want to sing "Silent Night" and "Joy to the World" for all their worth in church on Christmas Eve, I would be wise to spend the weeks between now and then letting "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus" fill my mind.

As it did to me several years ago, it may come as a surprise to you that according to this traditional Christian way of marking the year, Advent isn't Christmas. Advent prepares us for Christmas (all twelve days of it–not just one–from December 25 until January 5), but it does so indirectly. It prepares us by not yet focusing on the angels, shepherds, and the manger in Bethlehem. Instead, our attention is directed toward Israel's past longing for the Messiah to come, Christians' future hope that Christ will come again, and the implications of both of these on how we live today in light of Jesus' teaching that he will come to us and make his home in us.

Advent is characterized by words like waiting, longing, standing firm, watching, readiness, and staying awake. It puts us among the centuries of God's people who have cried, "How long, O Lord?" If we can remain in this ready, longing, watchful waiting, we will be prepared to recognize and celebrate Christ's coming.

During the coming weeks, we'll seek to prepare our souls for the joy of Christmas by waiting in expectant anticipation. Tomorrow, we'll look at what it means to wait on God, and how we go about doing so.

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A Note on the Prayers: Each day's reflection will include traditional Christian prayers. Normally, there will be two: a prayer for the day and a prayer for the week. The cycle of the prayers for the day will repeat each week, and part of the goodness of them is that they help us to enter into a weekly rhythm–for example, by being mindful of the resurrection on each Sunday. The prayers for the week emphasize the themes of the traditional scripture passages for that week of Advent. These are intentionally repetitive–by the third or fourth time that we pray them, we're likely to be more engaged with God through what they say than if we had only scanned over them one time.

A Prayer for the Day:

O God, you make us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of your Son our Lord: Give us this day such blessing through our worship of you, that the week to come may be spent in your favor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*

A Prayer for the Week:

*From The Book of Common Prayer, Public Domain (1) Dallas Willard's definition of joy

Wait on God: Daily Emails for Advent

November 3, 2013 Daniel Harris

I will be writing daily posts for Advent this year, beginning on December 1 and ending on Christmas Eve. In a similar style to our earlier series for Lent, each day's message will include a reflection from me and a prayer for the day.

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