Hope's Consummation

We the...“the people living in darkness, have seen a great light, and on those living in the shadow of death...

                    ...a light has dawned.”

                                                   ~Matthew 4:16

                   

              (the following is a repost from the archives)
             
         Merry Christmas to all and a Blessed New Year

I bang encrusted snow off boot against wood doorframe, while brushing cold and snow from arms. Husband's eyes meet mine through vapor and anticipation.



"Are we really here?" Words tumble forth from tired, shivering lips.

Dogged with cold, legs stumble into small, warm bare room. No pristine white beds with vases of flowers from well wishers,  no childish, wall pictures reminding of happy, jubilant times. No exultant faces holding forth bundles of joy to eager parents. All here is quiet. Awkward.     

       
A reminder that those who dwell here, do so in veiled tragedy.

Familiar nervousness keeps body trembling long after chill has worn off. Anticipation seeks out doorways to other rooms, probing for sounds of children.

Are my boys in there? 

Motherly instinct rises, and eagerness replaces nervousness. Grasping husband's hand I quickly follow stoic white coats as they lead through open doorways into much larger room. Coats and shoes removed,  breathlessly expectant, we sit on small wooden chairs, while white coats exit....

with promise of long awaited hope's consummation.

 

One starlit night, in a lowly stable,a long awaited King was born.

"But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman …"
                                                                                ~Gal 4:4

                             The Lord God said when time was full
                             He would shine His light in the darkness
                             He said a virgin would conceive
                             And give birth to the Promise
                             For a thousand years the dreamers dreamt
                             And hoped to see His love
                             The Promise showed their wildest dreams
                             had simply not been wild enough
                             The Promise was love
                             and the Promise was life
                             The Promise meant light to the world
                             Living proof that Yahweh saves.
                             For the name of the Promise was Jesus.

                         ~Michael Card

To be in tune with the divine, we too must learn to wait for the fullness of time. The time for our long awaited Hope to be consummated.

May the Advent of the Christ waiting remind of us of our Hope,

when Christ comes a second time and establishes His kingdom on earth.

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora

Slaying Dragons

Husband comes softly, tiptoeing through the dark. Through early morning's incoherency, I hear him approaching, long before he reaches my bedside, with hand's gentle, rolling touch.

 

It's time to wake up honey.....
 
Eyes stay shut, as I pull bedclothes tighter, wrapping into a cocoon of warmth against the cold and the pull of the dark...I hear children's raised voices and I groan inwardly...

Are they up and fighting again already?

There isn't enough of me and what there is of me seems impotent, and I'm groping for grace. It's easy to forget the truth in the dark. Sadness of new day wrings bones dry.

To be so defeated before day's beginning.....
Lord Jesus ~ Grant me Grace....

Week's candles smolder cold...

As I wake in the dim of the winter solstice. I don't feel the light. Skin crawls with the darkness. Like Mary, I am living advent, aching for the birth....

Mary travailed as her hour came, experiencing the ebb and flow of terrible, contractions. She nurtured the child in her womb for close to nine months, has sacrificed, has loved and  awaited the coming of world's Hope. She knew that what was emerging was a result of love, a gift from God, becoming life eternal. As she neared the time to giving birth, her pains become stronger, more intense, and longer in duration. She screams, she weeps, she writhes in pain, until that tiny babe finally rests in her waiting arms, revealing fulfillment. Intake of breath...all is not over for Mary. The serpent is poised to devour her newborn...

The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.
                                             ~Revelation 12:4,5

Truly Mary suffered far more than any woman on earth.

Mary (the Woman) flees to the desert. Yet the woman's real protector is God, who had prepared the desert as her place of refuge on earth (Rev. 6, 14). In vain the dragon endeavors to destroy her,

...so he takes his war to her offspring.

We are her offspring...

I am the bride, the chosen. This travail must be experienced, this war must be fought, and realization must sink in, permeating every part of me even in this desert, that God will open the earth to swallow what threatens.

Never fear shadows.They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby.            

      ~Ruth Renkel                                             

Christmas asks nothing of us but embrace. Lay down the expectations, the efforts, the perfectionism and performance.

Simply wait for His coming...

The Incarnation of the Son of God united earth to heaven. His blood has done all the work. He shed it to release us from burden -- making possible Advent of  Love, Joy, and Hope for Peace


Slowly bedclothing is tossed aside, I rise taking deep breath.

The Light has come into the world...

He's asking me to grasp the Light and take it out into the Dark.

... those who follow the true way come to the light, and it shows that the things they do were done through God.

                                        ~John 3:18-21

There is nothing to fear, for the Light illuminates that all the good being done in the dark chaos of a day is done through God, that He carries, that He sustains, that He conquers.



~Lord God....I simply come to your Light.

The dragon is slain...
This will be a Christmas of rest. 

May Christ's birth free you from the darkness, bringing you ever increasingly into His Light

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora






























 

Do not be Anxious

 This candle is lit to remind that our Lord Jesus brings peace to all who trust in Him.

God created this world to be a good place to live, but sin curse came, and filled it with sadness and hardship. Despite our sin, God promised the people of Israel(and us) that He would someday restore the joy of living in His good creation. Spiritual redemption came with the baby of Bethlehem. True peace is possible, because through Jesus birth we can now be reconciled to God.



 But still, “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."  Sin continues to reduce the field of our dreams and concerns down to wants, needs, and feelings. Sin can make living scarily self-focused, self absorbed, self motivated, becoming a knife that cuts asunder our loyalties between the pursuit of God and the affairs of this world.

We fret....
  
        We worry...

               We are anxious....

financial burdens, parenting, health expectations, work expectations, holiday performances, presentwrapping, Christmas clutter, house cleaning.....anxiety continually invades, blotting out joy,

replacing with angst...

 The busyness of Christmas can keep us from retreating to  place of

refuge..

 somewhere quiet that will ensure peace.

 But peace isn't a place to be found on a map, or even a place that can be created.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
                                                          ~ Isaiah 9:6

Christ's life outwardly was one of the most troubled lives that was ever lived: tempest and tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves breaking over it all the time. But the inner life was a sea of glass. The great calm was always there.

                                                      ~Henry Drummond

For enduring Peace, look for a Person whispering the word softly to your anxious heart: Peace, peace, peace. Seek a Person, the very Lord of Peace, who is willing to give you his very own abiding, unwavering peace.

                                                       ~Ann Voskamp

Breathe deeply.  

Stress deceives: There are no emergencies.


Stress isn't a situation. Stress is a state of mind.


...and state of mind is all choice. Choose to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ, (2 Cor. 10:5)  the Person of Peace.


I can choose stress thoughts... or I can choose to dwell with the Prince of Peace in this place.


Doesn't urgency over everything imply that God's in control of nothing? Or do we secretly like blustering about perpetually stressed --- because we suppose it's evidence of the pressing importance of our work? And yet if I'm on edge, doesn't that mean I'm not centered.... in Him?

Deep breath in, deep breath out. I'm all here and so is He and there's no fear.



When I fully enter into now, the weight of being fully in the moment slows time down.
Stress is not a function of our environment, but of our thinking patterns.

God invites us to slow down and abandon our worries. To come and abide.

There's a silence waiting with the door open, a slow pace where He lingers.  Cut a clearing through the mental clutter; He will make a way in.

Wind down the whir of the holidays, and you will hear it: the whisperings of the one who was born 2,000 years ago in  a lowly manger.

~Lord help me to slow down, to take moments to sit without words, embracing humility, abandoning temporal cares, allowing the Prince of Peace to abide within me. 

May the Advent of the Christ waiting bring us peace from the one who was sent to break sin's curse and reconcile us with our creator God.

 The punishment that brought us PEACE was upon him. Isaiah 53:5

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora

Advent of Joy

Hope and Love's flame glow cast luminescent light against wall, as children expectant, wait to welcome joy candle's entrance.

“What makes these more than wax and wick?”

The light, brighter by the week, points us toward Jesus who has called us to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

So much to be Thankful for, so much to be joyful about.....

Joy comes from the holy Spirit

Roman's 15:13

Joy and gratitude will characterize you when you are under the Holy Spirit’s control. Whether public or private, inward or outward, Spirit-induced joy produces singing that comes from the heart.
                                                     ~John MacArthur

Won't you please scroll down a bit to pause the music located at the end of  posts, (just press the larger half button in the center at the bottom of the player) and take a moment to listen? The sound of young boys singing can always move me with tears to such joy.

"The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices."

                                                        ~Martin Luther
 

 

 

The ancient waiting is over. We have the greatest reason to celebrate.

 

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.

                                                              ~Augustine

Sunday is the third Sunday in Advent -- Joy. Imagine our heavenly Father's joy as He looked down on earth on that first Christmas. Imagine, too, how he beamed with pride as the shepherds and angels worshiped His son, the greatest gift of all.

 

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,  "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"                                                    ~ Luke 2:8-14

This Advent season of the Christ waiting, may we remember

that the gift of Christ becoming flesh, is a gift of indescrible

JOY!

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora

Love's Cost

While Hope's Candle continues to steadily burn with promise of Christ's coming, Love's Candle, wick expectant, sparks into existence.
Children's eyes widen in delight as that which was unseen is pushed aside, replaced by Love's soft glow.

When Christ came to earth, and became flesh, His coming provided a way through the darkness, a way back to our beloved creator.

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. He was in the beginning with God. 3. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
                                                               ~John 1:1-5

Candle's light flickers in small circle of warmth, casting shadows on upturned faces and wandering eyes. Distractions linger in murkiness of surrounding room threatening to extingish Word's illumination.

 
Father, don't let the darkness steal my child's understanding...

 

It was God's love that sent Jesus that night to Bethlehem. It was God keeping His promise to Adam, and Abraham that their offspring would crush the Serpent's head and destroy the curse of sin.

 Help them to be convinced of the uniqueness of Christ, their only hope for the cure of sin disease....

Christians have historically confessed the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. We believe nothing less than the incarnate Son of God in whom the fullness of the diety dwells in human form, the fully divine and the fully human-the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
                                                    ~John R. Frank

But God's love came with a cost. He must have felt both the joy and the pain of the Christ coming. He knows what it's like for us to have moments of bliss and others of brokenness.            

After all..... the manger led to the cross.

Redemption is a greater work even than creation, and especially when we consider the way in which God has achieved it, even through the sending of His only Begotten Son into this world in all the marvel and the wonder and the miracle of the Incarnation, but above all in delivering Him up to the Death upon the Cross. This is the supreme thing – that sinful fallen man can be redeemed and restored, and ultimately the whole of creation also.

                                                         ~Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

He understands..that is why we can come to Him…the One who came for us. He knows us fully and loves us deeply. He celebrates, comforts, calls us each by name.

If we want proof of God’s love for us, then we must look first at the Cross where God offered up His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Calvary is the one objective, absolute, irrefutable proof of God’s love for us.
                                                       ~Jerry Bridges

Lord, help my children to realize that there is nothing more essential to their lives than the incarnation.....

Help us to live out the Truth; Jesus is not one of many ways to approach God, nor is He the best of several ways; He is the only way.

 May the Advent of the Christ waiting expose our depravity and proclaim the Christ Light sent to the world to show us the only way out of darkness.

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora