Category: Advent

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Christmas PRESENT

Last Advent the first passage I read was the start of John’s gospel. As I lay in bed next morning, I ‘heard’ it in my head, but in the present tense. It had a huge impact, making everything NOW rather than then. Perhaps it will for you too:  

“In the beginning is the Word, and the Word is with God, and the Word is God. He is with God in the beginning. Through him all things are being made; without him nothing is being created. In him is life, and that life is the light of men. The light is shining in the darkness and the darkness does not understand it.  

“Here is a man sent from God whose name is John. He comes as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men may believe. He himself is not the light; he comes only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man is coming into the world. He is in the world, and though the world is ever being made through him, the world does not recognise him. He comes to that which is his own, yet his own do not receive him. Yet to all who do receive him, to those who believe in his name, he gives the right to become children of God… 

The Word is becoming flesh and is making his dwelling among us. We see his Glory, the glory of the one and only, who comes from the Father, full of grace and truth.” 

By a JM member from the December 2010 magazine. Search our library for more articles, reflections and poems on the themes of Advent and Christmas.

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-gift-box-360624/

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A Reflection for Advent

Lead-in at a Julian Meeting in Australia in December 2013 

An Advent message in the Book of Lamentations? Unlikely as it seems, some verses seem to hold a messianic significance.  

In Lamentations the first four chapters are written in acrostic form: each verse – or in chapter 3, each triplet of verses – starts in order with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The book, attributed to Jeremiah, comes just after his prophecies. The poetic form of lament is common in the Old Testament, and there are more laments than praises in the Psalms.  

Jeremiah and Lamentations is a tale of judgment on God’s chosen people because of their sin and rebellion. However there are promises that some will be saved, that God has not utterly abandoned them and they will be restored. Their very existence was testimony to God keeping his promises. While the people agreed that they deserved punishment, they were impatient for the good bits of the prophecy to take place.  

Chapter 3: 22-26: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. they are new every morning: great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.  

Jeremiah is expressing his hope in God. Prophecies can have multiple fulfilments and so the prophecy fulfilled in Jeremiah’s time has its ultimate fulfilment in the birth of Jesus Christ.  

Advent is a season of preparation and waiting. We wait for the One who brings salvation to the world. An angel tells Joseph, Mary’s betrothed, in a dream …you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21)  

It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.  

Two things come together to make Christmas necessary. The first is our need to be saved – not a popular idea today. We are self-made men and women who can chart our own course and settle our own destiny. We believe the hollow promise that ‘anyone can change the world.’ But it just isn’t true. We don’t all have the opportunity, the ability, or the desire to do that. Our desire is the problem – not only do we desire the wrong things, but we do not desire the One who made us, do not desire to know Him or honour Him. We cannot escape our web of guilt, decay and death. We cannot change ourselves, let alone the world. And we need someone to save us.  

Yet that alone would not explain Christmas. We could have been left to take the consequences of our own decisions. But Christmas is necessary because God won’t give up on us. He is true to Himself, and won’t abandon us. His determination to rescue his people, to eventually gather them round His throne and shower them with his blessings, is the great explanation of why Mary fell pregnant and Christ was born.  

So let us focus on God’s gracious gift of love and salvation that came to us in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.  

I conclude with the beautiful words from Isaiah 9:6,7. Notice how often the word “will” appears in this passage. These are the Lord’s precious promises to us, to encourage us in a confused and turbulent world.  

For unto us a child is born,  

to us a son is given,  

and the government will be on his shoulders.  

And he will be called  

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,  

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  

Of the increase of his government and peace  

there will be no end.  

He will reign on David’s throne  

and over his kingdom,  

establishing and upholding it  

with justice and righteousness  

from that time on and forever.  

The zeal of the LORD Almighty  

will accomplish this.  

©John Ryall 

Photo https://www.pexels.com/@nubikini/

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The God Within – Something Personal 

In discussion with an Anglican friend earlier in the year, I suggested that the liturgy of the Church of England, even the modern versions, contains very little of the God within. It tends to look to God above, to God looking down, to gratitude, confession and petition. Prayer is surely about nurturing a relationship.  

 
Teresa of Avila, however, has much to say about the God within: “Settle yourself in solitude and you will come upon God in yourself”. And, as a child, I remember being impressed by a saying of Mahatma Gandhi: “I believe God is closer to me than fingernails to the flesh”. Admittedly, being of the Quaker persuasion, I stand towards the edge of the Christian tradition and I look towards waiting in silence, to experiencing moments of transcendence, however simple and fleeting, to assist me in my way through life. 

 
Earlier this year our family spent a week in the hills in mid-Wales. We stayed in an old farmhouse where the view from the yard provided a sublime vision of quiet: meadow, trees, blue mountains, a few silent sheep and, blessedly blue sky. Occasional flights of goldfinches feasting on the purple thistle heads only contributed to the peace. Early each morning I would sit and marvel at the quality of the silence. One morning, indeed, I felt “caught up” in a moment of timelessness. It has come into my mind often since and I have remembered a beginning of a poem by R. S. Thomas which fits completely: 

 
And God said: How do you know? 

And I went out into the fields 

At morning and it was true. 

 
Such intimations are of inestimable value in helping us to navigate a world which contains so much destruction, suffering and inequality. It is all too easy to feel overwhelmed by news, to feel that one’s own puny efforts at supporting others, ‘saving the planet,’ are so miniscule as to be useless. For most of us we might say with T.S.Eliot: 

 
there is only the unattended 

Moment, the moment in and out of time, 

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight 

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning 

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply 

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music 

While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses, 

Hints followed by guesses; and the rest 

Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action. 

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. 

Janet Robinson (JM member) 

[Poem by R.S. Thomas is Amen. Quote from T.S.Eliot from Four Quartets ] 

Photo Tondi Johnston, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pregnancy_Week_22_by_Tondi_Johnston.jpg

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Shalom

We had wandered.

All over the place.

We came to John.

Listening to him, talking to him,

Fed the hunger, the need inside.

A way station. Respite. But not home.

The yearning persisted.

When Jesus appeared and John said:

“Look, the Lamb of God.”

We just knew.

We followed him,

And sat and listened,

And drank in his Spirit, his life,

The hope, the joy: his shalom.

Wholeness of being beckoned us

On a journey into belonging;

The healing of our minds;

Peace to our hurting souls.

Love that reaches deep enough

All the way in.

What do I want?

I have sought many things,

And been angry, disgruntled and resentful.

But my want led me to my true desire,

Where what I want, really want, became Jesus.

And nothing else mattered.

Not really.

Not when you arrive home forever.

© Angela Scott 2024

Photo
Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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We See Differently at Night

We see differently at night

Shadows fall in dark corners

And then the moon appears

Bright, round but silently

  Oh, so silently.

We hear differently at night

Small noises sound louder

And then the owl appears

Flying low but silently

  Oh, so silently.

We touch differently at night

Softly, afraid to make a sound

Light footsteps on the ground

Each foot, light and softly

 Oh, so silently.

We smell differently at night

Ground smells damp and wet

Breathe deeply with each step

breaths momently pause

  Oh, so silently.

We taste differently at night

Our lips savour the taste

We drink the silent moment

And we stop and wait

  Oh, so silently.

We believe differently at night

Our quiet souls begin to see

Our minds and ears stop hearing

And we reach out to God

  Oh, so silently.

© Poem and Photo by Ann Ridout

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Christian contemplative prayer and meditation a Julian Meetings experience

The video offers an experience of a typical Julian Meeting. Use for your personal prayer or in a meeting. Julian Meetings are a network of Christian ecumenical contemplative prayer groups across the UK, open to people of all faiths and none. Find out more details about a group near you at http://www.thejulianmeetings.net The website also has guidance for those not quite sure how to use the half hour silence for contemplative prayer and meditation.

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Poem for Christmas by Ruth Mwenya

Does Christ drop into you,

like water?

Sink into the deepest places,

seep into the narrowest ways;

right down into your feet

to ground you?

As Love descends,

does She hollow out your soul?

Stretch it at the edges.

Expanding your capacity for herself;

opening up the space inside you?

In the stillness,

Can you reach down?

Can you feel the warmth

on the tips of your fingers

as you touch the mystery

within?

Is it too deep?

Out of reach,

Just beyond your grasp.

Don’t give in to fear, dear one.

Be still.

Wait: the Christ is born again.

Love is rising.

Ruth Mwenya

wordsandmusingsruthm.blogspot.com