Advent Devotions

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

Anne Lamott is a favorite author of mine. In one of her books, perhaps “Bird by Bird,” she writes of the thoughts that come fluttering down from heaven. It’s because of those thoughts, she says, that she always carries a notebook and pen. Careless authors, she says, depend on their memories, and when a gift that comes from God is forgotten because it was not immediately written down, God is happy to pass it one to someone with pen in hand, and Lamott says she is not too proud to receive a second-hand thought.  For my part, not only am I fine with making use of a slightly used thought, but I am also quite happy to set aside an assigned topic to write instead about a fresh thought that God has given me so that it won’t grow mold on it.  So, this morning’s devotion is not, at least not straightforwardly, about serving.

Last Thursday, I attended a day-long synod workshop.  Several times during the six-hour day, the presenters asked a question or posted a statement and asked us to discuss them as pairs or at our tables.  One of the questions was, “What principle would you be willing to die for?”  The person to my left, an interim pastor in the south metro, and I paired up and turned to each other.  He shared with me that he had recently been through a painful divorce that has caused him to value his children more deeply than before.  “I would die for my children,” he told me.  I said, “Same.  Actually, I would not be willing to die for a principle, but I would die for a person.”

For millennia, people have been dying for principles. Many of those deaths have surely been quite heroic. I am presently reading a book about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Many thousands of Americans bravely fought and died in that war for the principle of ending slavery, but I wonder how many of those soldiers would have been willing to fight and die for a Black man or woman living next door to them.

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) Jesus spoke those words hours before doing precisely that, laying down his life for friends he loved. He didn’t accept crucifixion because “it was the right thing to do.” He died for his friends because that’s what they needed. I don’t understand exactly why that was the case, but I can’t believe Jesus would have accepted death if something short of that would have accomplished the same end.

It is good to have principles. Navigating life without principles would be chaotic and capricious. Deeper than principles, however, is love.