Day 1 - Hope in God

Child of Hope:
An Advent Devotional.

Child of Hope

To us a Child of hope is born,
To us a Son is giv’n,
Him shall the tribes of earth obey,
Him all the hosts of Heav’n.

His Name shall be the Prince of Peace,
Forevermore adored,
The Wonderful, the Counselor,
The great and mighty Lord.

His pow’r, increasing, still shall spread,
His reign no end shall know,
Justice shall guard His throne above,
And peace abound below.

To us a Child of hope is born,
To us a Son is giv’n,
The Wonderful, the Counselor,
The mighty Lord of Heav’n.

John Morrison

Hoping for the Messiah

For hundreds of years the people of Israel had been waiting for the Messiah, longing for the Anointed One to come. However, their vision was not uniform. Some expected the Messiah to be the Son of David, a leader who would restore the Kingdom of Israel. Others interpreted the prophecies of the Old Testament in terms of spiritual renewal. Most dreamed of military victory over the hated Romans, liberation for a people long-oppressed. Yet, if they could not agree about the details of His coming, all Jews were united in that they looked, with eager expectation, for “the consolation of Israel” to come(Luke 2:25).

Few people would have looked for Him in a manger, in a cattle shed, in Bethlehem. Fewer still would have expected a Savior who would suffer and die for their sins. Blinded by their hopes for a political leader, they overlooked the clear prophecies of a suffering servant (Isaiah 53). They allowed their circumstances to shape their hope. It took Calvary, and an empty tomb, to convince the fledgling Church that the Kingdom of God is not of this world.

Looking back, the early Christians recognized, in the birth of Jesus, the coming of the Child of Hope. May you know that hope in your life – a settled confidence in the person, promises and purposes of God, revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

Alan Trafford Advent 2008

Advent Sunday, November 30, 2008

Hope in God

But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in You.

Psalm 39:7

We hope for many things – for love or security, or for the pain to go away. Often our hope is little more than wishful thinking. The Stock Market craters and as we turn on CNN we say, “Let it not be as bad as yesterday!” Have you ever wondered to whom we are speaking when we make these remarks? Most of the time, we’re not really talking to anyone, we’re not even talking to ourselves, we’re just expressing our dreams. Usually, it’s pretty harmless, even if it does make the cat look at us sideways, as if she is asking, “What do you expect me to do about Wall Street?”

At times, though, our half-uttered requests are more than hot air, they are prayers. Entering the hospital bedroom, our “Let her be better” is more than mere words. Whether we admit it or not, our words are a form of intercession. Which begs a question – “To whom do we pray?” Some people address their prayers to their ancestors, others to various saints, still others to the universe, of which they feel a part.

For the Christian, our prayers are always addressed to God. We may name Him Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, but the intention is the same. The God whom we have met in Scripture and in our experience is the One to whom we turn, almost instinctively. We can say, therefore, that He is the One in whom we place our hope. Like King David, in Psalm 39, searching for help in a hard place, we turn to the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. We place our trust in the God revealed through His Son, and we ask for the help that only He can give.

Prayer for the Day

Father God,

Source of all wisdom and all joy,

we bow before Your will.

May all of our deepest hopes

be in line with Your Word.

As we begin our journey through Advent,

may we know the assurance of Your pardon

and the comfort of Your peace.

We ask it in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Advent Devotional

Starting on Sunday, November 30, I'll be posting my daily devotional for the season of Advent entitled "Child of Hope." Actually, it will run through the end of December. I suppose there must be too much hope to squeeze into Advent. You are welcome to use the devotional as you wish, as long as you credit appropriately. I'd appreciate hearing how and where it is used. Hard copies are being distributed for the members and friends of First Presbyterian, Lake Jackson, Texas.

Gods, Temples, and Blood

"Why are we here? (said Camaban). We know that the gods made us, but why? Why do we make things? You make a bow - to kill. You make a pot - to hold things. You make a brooch - to fasten a cloak. So we were made for a purpose, but what was that purpose?" He waited for an answer but neither Haragg nor Saban spoke. "And why are we flawed?" Camaban asked. "Would you make a bow that was weak? Or a pot that was cracked? We were not made flawed! The gods would not have made us flawed any more than a potter would make a bowl that was cracked or a smith would make a knife that was blunt, yet we are sick, we are maimed and we are twisted. The gods made us perfect and, and we are flawed. Why?" He paused before offering the answer: "Because we offended Slaol (the Sun god)."

You don't expect to find a statement of Christian anthropology in a secular novel, least of all in one set in the second millennium BC, but that's exactly what you get in Bernard Cornwell's Stonehenge.

I've read quite a few of Cornwell's novels, particularly from the Sharpe series, dealing with the Napoleonic wars, and the Warlord Chronicles, set in England in the early Middle Ages. I've yet to delve into the Starbuck Chronicles, which tell the story of the American Civil War. An Englishman, now living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with his American wife, Cornwell is a natural storyteller with a fine eye for detail and a flair for the description of battle. There are very few references to Christianity in his novels. Rifleman Richard Sharpe, for example, seems to have been dragged up without any thought of God. Some of the villains, such as Sergeant Hawkswill, use god-fearing language, but their lives belie their words. It's only in Cornwell's later books (ironically, dealing with Sharpe's early career) that one encounters a sympathetic presentation of devout Scottish Highlanders praying the psalms before marching fearlessly into battle. Sharpe's early mentor in India, though a somewhat dour Presbyterian, is at least a man of great personal integrity. Then, out of the blue, in Stonehenge, we find a passage that is almost Calvinist.



Admittedly Camaban, the sorcerer, who speaks the words I have quoted, turns out to be as crazy as a loon, but that doesn't make his assessment false. Camaban, who was almost offered as a human sacrifice as a child, turns out to be flawed himself. He is not averse to murdering his older brother, or to stealing his younger brother's wife. This merely confirms his own hypothesis. For most of the characters in Stonehenge, life is nasty, brutish, and short.

Yet the search for truth remains. God is not to be found in the the cycle of the seasons, or the phases of the moon, or the progression of the sun. Though a blue-stone be brought from farthest Wales, or a cap-stone be set in place, four times the height of a man, these exertions do not bring Camaban closer to God. The construction of Stonehenge merely symbolizes the spritual quest, the striving for the divine that seems so much a part of the human psyche. Perhaps, in his novels, Cornwell also participates in the quest.

On his website, Cornwell confesses that he was raised, in East Anglia, within a Christian sect known as the Peculiar People, (a phrase taken from I Peter 2:9).

At some point he must have rebelled against their strict and regimented way of life. I have no idea what his religious affiliation is today, if any; but his novels still contain echoes of the homesickness of the soul, which is our longing for God.

Camaban has the wrong solution. A temple will not bring a god to earth, no matter how grand. Neither will the Ruler of the universe be impressed by the shedding of human blood. But his analysis has the ring of truth. We were made for a purpose; but we are flawed. We have offended against God's desire and design. Recognizing, somehow, that we were made to be worshippers, we have raised our monuments to the sky, but they have not reached to heaven.

The genius of Christianity is not just its anthropology, its understanding of the fallen nature of humanity, it is the unique claim that heaven has come to earth. Christ was not drawn down by our blood-offerings, but by our misery; and it is by His sacrifice that we are healed.

Two Observations

First, a brief caveat: I've always tried very hard to be non-partisan in terms of party politics. I've spoken often about issues, but rarely, if ever, about parties. Just to put it in English terms (which is probably safer), in my congregation in Newcastle we had members who were lifelong supporters of all three major political parties. I was very careful never to take sides. Usually, we agreed about the issues, though we would sometimes disagree about how those issues ought to be faced.

I've tried, in the United States, to keep the same position. Apart from anything else, I don't think that, as a guest enjoying the benefits of American democracy, I need to be telling my hosts how to run their country. Nevertheless, and without being partisan, I want to make a couple of observations about the recent elections.


First, I still find it amazing that the election seems to be dominated by the media. Last night, the pundits waited until five seconds after the polls had closed in the West to declare that the electoral votes would be going to Barack Obama, and that, therefore, they could declare him to be the next President of the United States. This is just odd. Presumably, their numbers are taken from exit polls, because there is no way for votes to have been counted so quickly. This, to me, seems to diminish democracy. It certainly doesn't aid it. In another example, we watched as races were announced as being won or lost in Colorado (where we happened to be at the time) when as little as 15% of the precincts had reported their results. I know that people are anxious to know who has won, but wouldn't it be better to wait until every vote has been counted? The television pundits have no business declaring that candidate X has won. Surely that's the responsibility of the electoral authorities.


Second, I found it odd last night that the pundits kept telling us that race had nothing to do with the presidential election. Even a conservative commentator said that this election proves that voters are not particularly interested in the pigmentation of a person's skin. And yet, at the same time, the networks were waxing lyrical about how this was an historic night because an African-American had been elected to the highest office. You can't have it both ways. It seems obvious to me that race certainly did have an effect on the election. The percentage of African-Americans voting for Obama was huge, and seemed to be based far more on the color of his skin than on the content of his policies. In one interview, for a Denver station, some jubilant African-American kids were asked why they had voted for Obama. Most of them replied, instantly, "Because he's a brother, man!" Which raises an interesting point: if it is racist not to vote for someone because of the color of his skin, isn't it equally repugnant to vote for someone because of the color of his skin? It made me wonder, also, whether some white Americans were voting for him out of some kind of collective guilt for the horrors of slavery. Whatever the motivation, it's simply not true to say that race played no part.

Obama's problem now, of course, is that the expectations have been raised so high, he is unlikely to be able to meet everyone's hopes. The economy still is in dire straights, health care still needs to be fixed, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be solved by waving a magic wand. Will he regret his decision to stand? Will his election turn out to be just as polarizing as was that of his predecessor. Over 44 million Americans did not vote for Obama. Just over 48 million did. The next four years should be interesting. He needs our prayers.