Advent Devotions

Today’s author is Intentional Interim Pastor, Steve Sylvester.

Every now and then, after I preach a sermon, someone will say something like, “I don’t think that’s what that passage was about.”  I typically hear that as, “I wish you had preached on one of the other thirty things that passage is about.”  One of the delights of being a preacher is to be able to go back to “the same old readings” year after year and be met not with one piece of stale bread, but with a table full of new and differing dishes.  And one of the delights of writing a devotional for you each Monday is that I am able to give a bit of attention to one of the thirty things in Sunday’s reading that I couldn’t shoehorn into the sermon.

In the “preamble” to the burning bush story, we are told that “God heard” the groaning of the Israelites, “remembered” the covenant, “looked upon” them and “took notice” of their suffering.  Those are somewhat cool words.  They feel a bit detached.  Similarly, after a brief introduction, God speaks to Moses and says, “I have observed the misery of my people… [and] I have heard their cry.”  Still cool, still detached.  But then things change.  “Indeed,” God says, “Indeed, I KNOW their sufferings.” 

In the Bible, the word “to know” is a hot word, a word connoting intimate engagement, relationship.  Think of when we are told in Genesis 4, that “[Adam] knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain.”  Or remember when Paul in Philippians wrote, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings.”  I don’t read cool and detached from Genesis 4, and Paul is not talking about knowing “about” Jesus.  There are those who say we can’t really talk about God “feeling,” but “I KNOW their sufferings” certainly feels more experiential than observational.  And that sharing of suffering—perhaps prefiguring Jesus sharing our humanity by being born into our earthly reality—is immediately followed by God saying, “I have come down to deliver.”

There are many things we need from God, and I think two of the most profound are that we need for God to sit with us in our suffering, perhaps even to suffer with us, and we need for God to deliver us from our suffering.  If you have been at wit’s end, you know what it means to have God say, “Scootch over a bit and let me sit here with you.  I’m not going to try and ‘fix’ it.  I know what you’re feeling, and I want you to know you are not alone.”  You also know what it means when you are ready to be given a hand and to be delivered out of your suffering.

I know we aren’t even at Halloween yet, but I’m going to close this devotion with two verses from one of my favorite Christmas hymns.

2. He came down to earth from heaven
who is God and Lord of all,
and his shelter was a stable,
and his cradle was a stall.
With the poor, the scorned, the lowly
lived on earth our Savior holy.

4. And our eyes at last shall see him,
through his own redeeming love;
for that child so dear and gentle
is our Lord in heaven above;
and he leads his children on
to the place where he is gone.