Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent on the Western Church Calendar, (I believe it was the Second Sunday of Nativity on the Eastern Church Calendar). This is a special season during which we reflect on the birth in the flesh of our great God, Savior and King – Jesus.

My family has kept this holy time each year by seeking to have daily readings together in the evening with an Advent wreath. We light the candle for that week each evening. during the second week (beginning on Sunday) we light the both the first and the second candle, and so on each week. On the Day of Nativity, Christmas Day, the final candle is also lit – the Nativity candle. It is in the center of all the other candles and is white – and represents Christ, the Light of the World. The other candles are generally purple or some color close to that. Life being the way it is, especially now that we have older children involved in many activities, as well as work schedules that can run into the evening hours, we haven’t been able to worship together every evening without interruption in quite a few years. I just try to pick up where we left off – giving an overview of the reading(s) and how it/they flow from our last reading to the present one. It’s a very flexible curriculum.

The Advent readings are really excellent in my opinion. They are put together by an Orthodox Christian. The oversize booklet is called How About Advent! published by the Orthodox Christian Education Commission. Orthodox Advent begins November 15 and continues through December 25 – so, for about 6 weeks. It is a great resource for families of any age, but especially great to begin when you have small children. The readings basically cover from Creation through all of salvation history. The Messianic promise of the “seed” which will crush the serpents head provides the basis of the readings. So the promises that God makes all point to their fulfillment in his Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. He is the thread holding the readings together – just as he is the thread holding the Scriptures together, and the focus and the lens through which we look to understand the Scriptures.

For last night, because we were starting with the Western Advent calendar, over a week later than the Eastern church, I gave a brief overview of the previous readings which covered the days of creation culminating in the creation of Man: Adam and Eve, then moving through our fall from life in union with God – empowered by his grace and goodness, his joyous presence. the readings then move through Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and, our reading for the night, Joseph. It was wonderful for me to walk back through those stories, thinking about them in the light of God’s promise to send his Son for our salvation – to bring us back to God – to heal us through the salve of his good, holy and life-giving presence ‘in the flesh’: incarnate. I was really encouraged – remembering God’s faithfulness from Creation – even in light of Eve and Adam’s sin – God’s goodness is clearly seen in his promise to bring good out of the devastation of sin and death upon us and all creation.

What struck me last night, which I shared with my family, was how good God is to make all things “work together for good” and to bring good out of evil. It is so true that where “sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” – so that sin, and its power to destroy and distort, to wound and bring hopelessness, never outstrips God in his goodness and overflowing grace. “God is love” (I John 4:8b) and so he “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” (I Cor 13:7). Nothing can exhaust the endurance or quality of his love. This is the hope that I need in a world that uses people and then spits them out, in which I continue to need to humble myself and seek God’s tender mercies and forgiveness for wrongs done to my wife, family, friends and to God and his people. From Noah, who struggled with drinking, through Abraham, who struggled with lying for fear of losing his wife, through Isaac, who had rivalrous wives, and difficulties with in laws, through Jacob who followed his mother Rebekah’s advice in deceiving his father Isaac in order to secure the blessing of his first born brother Esau. Rebekah sought to fulfill God’s word to her (Gen 25:23) through deception! Yet through it all, God was faithful and true, keeping his promises using broken vessels. He was merciful and forgiving.

And finally, which was our reading for the night, there was the story of Joseph – given dreams by God – foretelling God using Joseph to save his family during times of famine to come. Joseph was sold into slavery by his very brothers who were consumed with envy and bitterness over his favored status with Jacob their father. The years he spent in slavery, many in the dungeons of Egypt, could have made him bitter, could have eaten his heart out and left him with nothing but hopelessness and despair, but he allowed God to try him, to purify him, and to use him, no matter where he was, for his purposes. God worked his patience in him so that when Pharaoh elevated him to power in the land of Egypt, he was not a vengeful, hateful, cynical person. What he said to them a struck me as amazing. When he revealed himself to them as their brother he said,  “and now, do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.” (ESV, my italics, Gen 45:5) He wasn’t thinking of himself, but of his brothers and how they would feel in that moment. He wasn’t full of anger. He didn’t give them a piece of his mind. He was full of faith in God, and saw through his suffering to God’s greater purposes. When it was truly in his power to do harm and exact his revenge upon his brothers, he did not. Later, when his father died – removing a restraining influence upon Joseph, he did not take his vengeance – was not bitter. He rather weeps and says to them, “‘Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. so do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.’ Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.” (Gen 50:10-21)

God brings good about even through our brokenness. Whether it is the brokenness we inflict upon ourselves, or that which others bring upon us, God is near to us, cherishing us in our tears, comforting us in our pain and disillusionment. But like Joseph, we must “draw near to God” – for God will then “draw near to us” and comfort us through the grace of his Spirit, his very presence. Sometimes I can stay aloof from God, and bear my pain alone – somehow thinking that I deserve it, or conversely resenting it. That is wasted sorrow. It is here that I must learn the mystery of prayer, and of tears – where I pour out my heart to God in my sorrow over my sins, or over my circumstances, as well as pray for those who may have hurt and/or disappointed me. These are things we can all relate to, or will be able to relate to at some point in our lives. Stoic resignation only bears the fruit of pride and unbelief. Like in Joseph’s life, God is at work. He will bring good out of great difficulty, or evil. We may feel abandoned by God or others, but we must, as Paul writes of Abraham, “hope against hope” in our faithful Father. The morning star will rise, and the night of weeping will come to an end with the brightness of the morning light upon the world. Then all the phantoms of the night, all the fearful thoughts, vanish in the sureness of what the Light reveals. God is good. Faith is not blind when it is in our good God. And we are not alone either, but are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses: the faithful men and women who have gone before us and whose lives attest to God’s goodness and faithfulness.

I love the song “Beautiful Things” by the musician Gungor. I will close here with some of the lyrics which aptly express the seeming paradox and gracious mystery of redemption through Christ. But isn’t this as well, the beautiful and bright mystery, the seed which is planted in the Nativity of Christ, and is fulfilled in his merciful cross, resurrection and ascension? The Nativity is the seed of the new creation, of the redemption of Christ which will renew and refresh all things.

Amen! Come Lord Jesus! (Rev 22:21)

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All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new
You are making me new