The Twentieth Day of Advent, 2016

Friday, December 16, 2016

Because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high shall visit us, “to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”  Matthew 1:78-79

Zachariah, filled with the Holy Spirit, broke his nine-month silence by quoting from Isaiah 9:2. Years and years before, the prophet had proclaimed God’s promise of a Messiah, and suddenly Zachariah realized that the promised Messiah was at hand! Darkness would be obliterated by the wonder of His Light!

That was good news then, and it is surely good news today! As I read the morning paper and the horrors of man’s inhumanity to man, I am sometimes overcome by the darkness of this world. People don’t love people, whom they can see. Why am I surprised that they don’t love God, whom they cannot see? Depression would overwhelm me, were it not for the fact that God’s promised Jesus has come to bring light into my darkness, to remove fear from the shadow of death.

And guide my feet into the way of peace? Yes, even that, though not the peace that the word is crying for right now but instead the greater peace that passes all understanding. One of the names of God revealed in the Old Testament is Jehovah-Shalom, the God of Peace. He guides into His shalom, which is like being in the eye of a hurricane while the storm is raging all around.

Father, my heart is strangely still as I trust in you. I hear the winds of war and the cries of pain all around me, and I am grieved. But I rest in the knowledge that you are God of the Universe. It’s in your hands. Amen

And Then It Was Christmas: A Journey Toward Christmas
prepared for Homosassa United Methodist Church, 2006,
by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator.