Third Sunday of Advent—Gaudete Sunday—Hope and Rejoicing!

“Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”

     -James 1:17 (NASB)

Crisp, clear—the sun crests over the eastern horizon this frosty morning, its rays glistening on the snow-graced earth. The sun brings a song of rejoicing to my heart. Its light reflects the Father of lights, in whom there is no turning or shadow. It gives us hope of longer days, stronger sunshine and, in time, warmer weather now not far away.

We are in mid-December as we approach this, the third Sunday of Advent. For centuries the church has call this Gaudete Sunday—Rejoice Sunday! On the advent wreath we have a special rose-colored candle to symbolize our jubilation.

We rejoice as we look forward to the celebration of Christmas, our Savior’s birth, just more than a week away now. Just as the sun is rising this morning with light and warmth and hope in its rays, Jesus arises afresh in our lives with healing in his wings:

"But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture.” (Malachi 4:2, NLT)

At any point in life we have sorrows and joys, some situations going well and others seeking to overwhelm us. Whatever our circumstances right now, we can rejoice. Our God is Light and in him is no darkness (1 John 1:5). Even if the sunshine is not shining for us any given day, there is a cause to rejoice. Just as the Sun of Righteousness rose in history some two thousand years ago, he will rise afresh in our given life situation. We have hope.

This is Advent Hope and Advent Rejoicing! This is what Gaudete Sunday is all about!

© 2018 Glenn E. Myers

Advent: Tutoring Us in the Art of Waiting

Advent tutors us in the art and virtue of waiting. Waiting does not come easily to any of us. Especially during the holiday season, any idea of waiting is discarded. Stores pipe in Christmas carols from Thanksgiving Day (or earlier) to Christmas, to put shoppers in the mood to buy. Marketers do not want anyone to hesitate but rather to buy on impulse.

In direct opposition to this atmosphere of having it all—and having it right now—spiritual growth comes slowly. Our faith is built through the gradual year-in and year-out walking faithfully with our God and being faithful to him during exciting times and difficult times alike.

Indeed the Greek word for faith, pistos, means both faith (believing and trusting) and faithfulness (remaining constant and true). We often see these as two separate ideas. However, in the Christian life they are inextricably linked. To believe in Christ is to entrust one’s life to him as Lord and to walk faithfully with him, hand-in-hand, during good times and bad.

Sometimes we experience growth spurts or seasons when we sense God’s presence so close. However, in between times of marked spiritual growth or mountain top experiences, “faith can demand long, patient waiting, when nothing seems to be happening, and this is just as necessary to growth,” writes Maria Boulding. Recently I read this quote and realized how true it is! Often our deepest growth takes place during those long times of just being faithful in the mundane things of life.

Maria Boulding then ties this idea of faithfulness with Advent. “We sometimes have to go on doing the small, ordinary things while we wait for God, as Mary did while she waited for the birth of Jesus; we have to wait for his moment, and wait for his work to ripen in ourselves. It may sometimes be more fruitful in the end if we live with a lingering question, and grow slowly towards wisdom, than if we find a quick answer partly dictated by our own desires. The waiting changes us, schools us, teaches us to know God.”

Advent this year—and life in general—is teaching me to wait. I want to love the questions in my life right now. As I linger with those questions and remain faithful in all the little responsibilities of life, God will bring about the growth and the end results that he desires. Let me not try to prematurely answer the questions only to end up simply following my own will. Rather, let me like Mary, respond to the Lord: Here I am, your servant, let it be done to me according to your word (Luke 1:38).

Maria Boulding, The Coming of God (Conception, MO: The Printery House, Conception Abbey, Inc., 2000), 40-41.

© 2018 Glenn E. Myers

Advent: An Invitation to Stillness

      

              The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

     He makes me lie down in green pastures.
 He leads me beside still waters.
     He restores my soul.”

-Psalm 23:2-3 (ESV)

Advent invites us into stillness. Away from the multiplicity of demands, opportunities and people, our mind begins to slow down. Many, if not most, of those opportunities and relationships that we set aside for a time are good: we were created to live full lives in this world. However, if they are only one side of the rhythmic pendulum of a whole, healthy life. One side swings into the many-faceted activity and interaction of the day. Then it swings back into solitude, silence and stillness—the time necessary to be alone with self and God. Just as day and night alternate, so we are created to flow out and back: flowing out to the manifold interactions of the world and then back into stillness.

The whole of contemporary society militates against such a practice of stillness and simplicity. Constantly multitasking, we try to squeeze more and more into the hours of the day. Employers want greater productivity out of us. Organizations and churches offer programs and activities to keep us occupied. Sports and media present unending opportunities to be entertained. Advertisers promise us greater gratification in life if we but buy more of their products. While none of these may be innately evil, as a whole the world system distracts us and allures us with a false assurance of genuine purpose and fulfillment in life.

Into such frantic busyness and multiplicity our Shepherd bids us follow him to green pastures where we can lie down and rest. The gentle waters of a stream welcome us to come and be restored—body, soul and spirit. A large shade tree welcomes us to stop running long enough to enjoy the Creator’s blessings freely offered to us. The song of a nearby bird extends an invitation to retreat from the fragmentation of our busy world for a while and step into simplicity.

Stillness does not come spontaneously to the human heart. Since the Fall in Genesis 3, we are worried and anxious about so many things. Jesus points us to nature to gain a different picture of what life could be like. “Look at the birds of the air,” instructs Jesus; “they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:26-27).

Stillness must be cultivated. The more often we practice stillness, the more we are able to carry it with us throughout the day. Even when things get hectic, we are able to access that still place within and find peace.

Advent is a season to cultivate such stillness. Whether it be a devotional time each evening of the four Advent Sundays or a day’s retreat, we are invited to still ourselves and prepare our hearts for Christ’s fresh coming into our lives.

© 2018 Glenn E. Myers

Stillness Awaits

           “Be still—let go, cease striving—

            and know that I am God.”

            -Psalm 46:10 (NASB and margin note)

Divine stillness waits for us. It beckons us to come. From a distance it welcomes our weary heart and mind to receive rest. How often we hear that invitation, and we desire to come. But, before we do so, we want to finish one more project. As soon as our responsibilities are fulfilled, we tell ourselves, we will take time to be still.

Of course once one obligation is met or one problem is solved, two more raise their heads, and we never quite get to that much-needed pause. That place of stillness eludes us. Like Martha in the Gospels, we are concerned about so many things—too anxious to join Mary in Jesus’ presence.

“Come to me,” says our Lord. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29). Jesus continues to extend the offer of inner rest. We somehow think that we cannot come to him until we have first unloaded our own burdens. However, it is precisely while those burdens weigh on us that we need to come.

Entering the place of stillness necessitates that we pause from our frenetic activity, even for five or ten minutes. Often we are afraid to do so. We are fearful of releasing our grip.

If we relinquish those fears and concerns to our loving God, however, we can find rest for our souls. Such a pause can make the difference for our whole day. Our hearts are renewed, our souls refreshed. The whole momentum of our day becomes refocused, and we reenter our responsibilities on the right foot.

Stillness awaits. I don’t want to ignore the Good Shepherd’s invitation.

© 2018 Glenn E. Myers

Long-Ago Christians Passionately Pursuing Christ

What was it like being a Christian when no one had a copy of the Bible? Well into the Middle Ages, the only copies of the Bible were in churches and monasteries. Laypeople had very little available to them before the year 1200. But from that time on, there were some great spiritual renewal across Europe.

Christian History Magazine just came out with an issue of Medieval Lay Mystics. These are laypeople who lived before 1500 who wanted to have a personal walk with the Lord. Many had a deep prayer life. Two of the items in this issue I wrote. You can copy and paste the links from here or just go to the sidebar and click!

https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/spiritual-awakening-for-the-laity

https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/everyone-a-bride-of-christ-ch127

Lent: Fasting to Confront our Destructive Passions

“Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.” -Colossians 3:5 (NASB)

The Apostle Paul calls us to consider ourselves dead our passions. Passions are things that drive us, that cause us to suffer (the basic meaning of “passion”). In our day we often employ the term “passion” in a positive sense—a passion for reaching the hungry, a passion for Jesus. These are the things that motivate our lives and drive us to seek and serve and the Lord.

At the time of the writing of the New Testament and the early centuries of the Church, however, “passion” referred primarily to the negative things that drive us. These are the destructive compulsions and addictions of our lives. The early theologian, Evagrius Ponticus, highlighted eight of these compulsions that can take control of our lives: gluttony, lust, greed, anger, inordinate sadness, bored laziness, vanity and pride.

The practices of fasting, giving alms, and prayer confront these destructive passions in our lives. Fasting, in particular, confronts gluttony, lust and greed.

First on the list of destructive passions is gluttony. When gluttony has a hold on us, we eat not just what we need or should properly enjoy in life. Instead, we keep on eating, trying to get more and more pleasure or attempting to fill an empty place in our hearts. Ironically, when we are driven by gluttony, we often eat so quickly that we fail to savor the food in our mouths. Instead, our focus is on “getting more.”

Because eating is essential to life, gaining self-control over the passion of gluttony is foundational to gaining victory over all the destructive passions that seek to control us, asserts Evagrius.

Along with gluttony, lust is a powerful passion in our lives. Both of these are compulsions of desire—we want something, not only to satisfy our physical needs but to try to satisfy an inner compulsion that craves for more and more. Gluttony and lust go hand-in-hand.

Greed is a third passion of desire—concupiscence. God created us to desire, for desire is what draws us out of ourselves to reach out in love toward our Creator and other people. Because of the Fall, however, our desiring faculty (concupiscentia in Latin) has become twisted in on ourselves. Our desiring becomes self-focused and is never satisfied. Our gluttony, lust and greed spring from our inner concupiscence that craves incessantly. Like an addiction, no matter how much we feed it, we grasp for more in order to get our “fix.”

If we can gain victory over food—a basic need of life—we can become free from lust and greed and the underlying bottomless craving of the passions and their demands. Fasting is therefore so important in our lives. It is not that we ourselves gain victory by our will power. Rather, fasting exposes the inner passions. Foregoing food brings the concupiscence to the surface where it can be dealt with. Then we call upon God’s mercy.

Lent is all about acknowledging our fallen nature and crying out for God’s mercy. We can never defeat gluttony, lust and greed by fasting alone. Instead, Lenten fasting helps us face those driving compulsions—those controlling passions—that must be taken to the cross. As they die with Christ on the cross (Romans 6:1-14), we are raised to new life and the Holy Spirit bears the fruit of self-control in us (Galatians 5:1-23). This is the Paschal Mystery of new life.

May we 0pen ourselves anew this Lent to the practice of fasting so that our hidden passions may be exposed and brought to Christ’s passion on the cross. May we than rise with Christ to a transformed life, no longer controlled by inner compulsions but instead free to enjoy God’s blessings, such as food, and free to live our lives fully for our Lord!

© 2018 Glenn E. Myers

Lent: Ash Wednesday as a Call to Return to the Lord with All our Heart

Return to me with your whole heart,with fasting and weeping and mourning. –Joel 2:12

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. -Jeremiah 29:13

Traveling through the daily challenges of life, we readily become preoccupied and distracted. Our spiritual focus is easy to lose, especially because we cannot see it with our physical eyes, while everything around us, calling for our attention, is so tangible. Taking our eyes off the goal, we often drift—sometimes just a little, other times quite far—from the path of pursuing the Lord.

God’s words through the Prophet Joel come crashing into our lives as we begin Lent: “Return to me with your whole heart!” Ash Wednesday is a call to conversion. All we like sheep have gone astray, as Isaiah 53:6 reminds us. So, as we begin Lent, we must ask ourselves: Where have I wandered from the Lord? Have I dwindled in prayer? How have I ceased loving others as I should? Has my focus shifted from Jesus to myself?

Wherever we have gone astray, we need to return to God with all our heart. Sorrowful for our erring ways, we are called to return with fasting and weeping and mourning. These three activities go together throughout the Old Testament. When the nation of Israel mourned for their sin, it virtually always included fasting to demonstrate their sorrow. These activities flesh out what it means to repent—to turn around and return to the Lord.

However, fasting, weeping and mourning are very counter-cultural. Contemporary society says: “Eat, drink and be merry! If it feels good, do it!” Lent, to the contrary, says: “Fast, if you are serious about seeking God. Give up what feels good and tastes good.” Today’s world promotes a “Life’s good!” approach to everything: “Let’s be entertained; let’s be happy all the time.” Lent, however, reminds us that there is a time to mourn—to actively be sorry for our sin. As Jesus said: Blessed are those who mourn, for they are the ones who will be comforted (Matthew 5:4).

As we enter Lent this year, let us embrace the three spiritual rhythms that Christians have practiced since the early centuries of the Church.

First, let us fast because fasting allows us to focus and sets us free from the physical desires and temporal things that tend to control us. Second, let us pray with a renewed intensity and commitment. In particular, let us seek God afresh in prayer and wait expectantly on God to move in our lives. Third, let us give to others. Giving alms, as it has traditionally been titled, gets the focus off of self and gives us opportunity to become “cheerful givers.”

Returning to God with our whole heart is what Lent is all about. Too often we simply make superficial change and so-called conversion that is only skin deep. When, however, we are serious enough to fast and weep and mourn, we have begun truly to seek God. When we do that, God promises in Jeremiah 29 that we will indeed find him: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”  

© 2018 Glenn E. Myers