Advent Devotions

Today’s author is Prince of Peace’s Intentional Interim, Pr. Steve Sylvester.

Anyone who has made more than a few trips around the sun has their month, their week, their day.  May is my month.  This week is my week.  May 22 is my day.  It was on May 22, 2023, that our son Sam was killed in an accident at work, so it is a struggle every time this month, this week, this day comes back round.

During much of the rest of the year, I often yearn for the pyrotechnics of the passage from Joel that Peter references in our Acts 2 Pentecost reading.  There is so much wrong with the world that I would dearly love to see the Spirit poured out for loud and over the top prophesy, visions and dreams.  I would welcome blinking neon lights from the heavens and billboards on the earth, along with blood, fire and smoky mist, and the sun turned to darkness and moon to blood, to herald the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.  Big things to fix big problems.

But this month, this week, two days from now, all I need, and exactly what I need, is this encouragement from Paul to the believers in Philippi: “The Lord is near.”  The Lord is near to take up my building anxiety as the 22^nd of May creeps closer.  The Lord is near to hear and respond to the angry and confused requests in my prayers.  The Lord is near to give me God’s peace, a peace that is felt but not understood, as my still broken heart and too busy mind are kept and guarded by another’s son who also died violently and too soon.

This deeply personal message is universal because the Spirit comes in this way to all of us in our suffering.  When we look back in anguish and forward without hope, the Spirit comes to sit with us in our pain.  The Spirit gives us to each other as gifts to lift and bear.  Apart from the Spirit, we would be pulling on spiritual bootstraps that just don’t exist.  So, this Pentecost finds me grieving, again, but also hopeful, comforted and at peace.  I pray the same for you.

The image accompanying this devotional is of a T-Shirt Sam had made for “Sola Angor,” the heavy metal band for which he played bass.  Sam asked an artist friend to design the woodcut for the shirt.  If you look closely, you can see Martin Luther, top left, using a Bible to banish Pope Leo X to hell.  Family and friends wore the shirts for Sam’s funeral here at Prince of Peace on June 5, 2023, and I am wearing it today, May 20, in honor of him.