Joseph the Dreamer

Matthew 1:18-25
The Fourth Sunday in Advent

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.” “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.” “The whole world needs a Christmas dream.” Have you ever noticed how often dreams and dreaming come up in Christmas songs? Dreams seem to come with the season, and this morning’s gospel lesson is no exception.

Joseph, who was engaged to Mary, has a dream in the passage in front of us this morning from the first chapter of the gospel according to Matthew. Joseph has three more dreams in next Sunday’s gospel lesson from the second chapter of Matthew. This Joseph who was engaged to Mary was apparently every bit the dreamer that his Old Testament namesake was.

In the world in which the New Testament was written, dreams were not interpreted psychologically as expressions of the wishes and desires of the subconscious mind. Dreams were not understood neurologically as a function of electrophysiological brain activity. In the world of the New Testament, dreams were taken spiritually, if you will, in that dreams were regarded as a means of receiving a message from God. And in the gospel of Matthew, Joseph was a dreamer.

In chapter 1, after Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant with a child that could not possibly be his, Joseph had a dream. And in that dream an angel appeared to him and told him to marry Mary anyway, because the child she was carrying was God’s doing. When he woke, we are told, Joseph took that dream as a message from God, and he did as the angel in it told him.

The gospel of Matthew has no interest in Joseph’s dream apart from the message from God that it contains. In the ancient world, the medium was not yet thought of as the message, as the twentieth-century communication theorist Marshall McLuhan taught us to think.

But what would it take for a “righteous man,” as Joseph is described in Matthew 1:19, a good, law-of-Moses-abiding man with an outstanding pedigree—descended as he was according to the genealogy in Matthew 1:1-17 from Abraham and David and Solomon and the kings of Judah—what would it take for such a man to marry a woman who was carrying a child that could not possibly have been his? In first-century Palestine, it would been unimaginable for a good Jewish man such as Joseph to do such a thing.

Unless . . . unless something entirely disrupted his sense of righteousness and order. Unless something utterly interrupted his way of thinking. Unless something completely altered the state of his reason, a man such as Joseph would have removed himself from Mary’s situation and gone on with his righteous and pedigreed life and found himself a similarly righteous and pedigreed wife.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, the medium is the message, not the message alone. As dreams are often wont to do, Joseph’s dream disrupted righteousness and order, interrupted thinking, and altered reason. To marry Mary anyway is an idea that comes in from the outside of righteousness, remote from thinking, and beyond reason. What happens to Joseph in this morning’s gospel lesson is every bit as unexpected as the fact that Mary was unexpectedly expecting.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ in the world and in our lives, Joseph’s dream reminds us that rightly understood, Advent and Christmas are disruptive, interruptive and altering. One of the great Christian heresies of our time and place is the popular assumption that being a Christian, following Jesus, is a confirmation of our sense of righteousness and order, an endorsement of our way of thinking, an affirmation of our reason. Nothing could be farther from biblical truth.

Jesus the son of Joseph (as he was called in the gospel of John in 1:45 and 6:42) grew up to say, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:34-39). Those are Jesus’ words, but he learned them from Joseph. Because when Joseph “followed his dream”—when Joseph abandoned righteousness and pedigree and thought and reason to marry Mary anyway—it would have cost him dearly in family and friends and social standing.

And that brings us to the content of the dream, the message. In this morning’s gospel lesson, the message is the message, not the medium alone. The message is of two parts: 1) marry Mary anyway 2) because the child she is carrying is God’s doing. The message is this: first, expect the unexpected; and second, it’s about what God is up to, not what you are up to.

Expect the unexpected. Have you ever known someone for a long time, only to discover something about them that you did not expect? When Bev and I married, we had known each other since we were both 10 years old. She thought she knew me. She really did. So you cannot imagine the surprise it was to her to discover that this otherwise free-spirited, undisciplined and sometimes off-the-wall guy would end squeeze the toothpaste tube carefully from the bottom instead of in the middle. And even worse than that, he wound up becoming a Baptist preacher! You think you know someone, and then it turns out that you don’t know them all that well after all. All of us have had that kind of experience at one time or another with one person or another and sometimes even with ourselves—or if we haven’t had it yet, we will.

(By the way, for those of you who keep up with such things, you might be interested to know that after last Sunday’s sermon, this week beside my sink in the double vanity in our master bathroom a brand new tube of toothpaste appeared. It didn’t have a sticky-note on it that read, “Shut up, already,” but it could have.)

Sometimes the unexpected comes to us for good and sometimes the unexpected comes to us for ill, as in a decline in our health or the death of a spouse or a child or the end of a marriage or the end of a job or the end of a business or the end of an entire sector of the economy. But either way, for good or for ill, we should not be surprised. We should expect the unexpected.

I used to love surprises. And then I became an academic administrator. When I became an administrator, a manager of policies and a controller of procedures, my love for surprises disappeared. My priorities became systematization, operationalization, procedurefication. I know those last two aren’t even words, but that’s the point. The message of Joseph’s dream—marry Mary anyway—reminds us that we cannot control the Holy Spirit; we cannot control the church which is the body of Christ; we cannot control God, no matter how hard we try and no matter how often or long we pray in the hope that we can.

So expect the unexpected, in life and with God, because it’s not about what you’re up to; it’s about what God is up to. In Joseph’s dream, it is as if God said, it’s not about you, Joseph. It’s about me. It’s not about your righteousness or pedigree or thinking or reason. It’s about my saving work in the world. “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). “‘They shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us’” (Matthew 1:23). It’s as if God said, “Get on board with me, Joseph.” The message of Joseph’s dream is the same to us, no matter how many times we have to hear it for it to sink into our thick skulls. It’s not about our righteousness or thinking or reason. It’s about God’s saving work in the world.

Sometimes I think that one of the reasons our culture has turned December into the most frenetic and distracted month of the year is so that we will not be tempted to listen to Joseph’s dream. Joseph’s dream reminds us that getting on board with God requires setting a lot of things aside, putting a lot things down, giving a lot of things up. As Jesus grew up to say, it requires us to put other people’s expectations aside to embrace the unexpected and to get on board with God.

Next Sunday morning, we’ll look at where that dream can take you. But for now it is enough to consider whether you will be taken at all by Joseph’s dream. Expect the unexpected. And it’s not about what you’re up to; it’s about what God is up to.


Photo by Tacit Requiem. Used by license under Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Mary the Revolutionary

Psalm 146:5-10
Luke 1:46-55
The Third Sunday in Advent 2010

Have you ever known someone for a long time, only to discover something about them that you did not expect? When Bev and I married, we had known each other since we were both 10 years old. I thought I knew her. I really did. So you cannot imagine the surprise it was to me to discover that this otherwise fastidious, careful and particular woman would actually squeeze the toothpaste tube indiscriminately in the middle instead of squeezing it systematically from the end like you’re supposed to. It was unseemly. It still is. There it is, every morning. This mangled toothpaste tube sitting on the bathroom counter reminding me that you think you know someone, and then it turns out that you don’t know them all that well after all.

I thought I knew Mary the mother of Jesus. After all, I’ve known her longer than I’ve known Bev. When I was still too young to know what the words were, much less what they meant, I crooned in a boy soprano, “’Round yon virgin mother and child.” Later, I would learn to sing, “Gentle Mary laid her child lowly in a manger.” Later still, I learned of Mary’s great submission to God. In response to a troubling message from an angel she said meekly, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary would never squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle!

So, perhaps you can imagine how surprised I was to discover that this otherwise virginal, gentle and submissive woman was a revolutionary. To be sure, the submissive, gentle and virginal woman is the Mary whom the church has championed down through the centuries. But the song that Mary sings in Luke 1, called in church tradition “The Magnificat,” after the first word in the Latin translation of her song, reveals a Mary who is every bit as subversive as she is submissive.
The gospel of Luke tells us that after Mary was told of her unexpected pregnancy, she left her home in Nazareth to travel south to the Judean hill country and the home of her older relative Elizabeth who was also unexpectedly expecting. Elizabeth greets Mary with a blessing on her and on the child she is carrying. And in response to Elizabeth’s blessing, Mary sings her song that is at least as subversive as it is submissive.

It begins with praise for God in verse 46 and rejoicing in verse 47. In verse 48, it moves to divine grace, Mary’s humility, and her blessedness in the eyes of others on account of God’s grace and her humility. Verses 49-50 return to focus on God: God’s mighty acts, God’s holiness, and God’s mercy. Verses 46-50 form a model prayer of praise. It should come as no surprise that the mother of the one who taught us to pray a model prayer would herself pray a model prayer in Luke 1:46-50.

We know that when it comes to faith formation, children are are not merely “passive recipients of parental influences,” as researchers at Bucknell University have pointed out. But a mother’s religious influence is not to be underestimated in any aspect of childrearing and child wellbeing. In a study titled the “Relationship Between Maternal Church Attendance and Adolescent Mental Health and Social Functioning,” psychologists Stuart Varon and Anne Riley found these results:
Youths whose mothers attended religious services at least once a week had greater overall satisfaction with their lives, more involvement with their families, and better skills in solving health-related problems and felt greater support from friends compared with youths whose mothers had lower levels of participation in religious services. Maternal attendance at religious services had a strong association with the youths’ outcome in overall satisfaction with health and perceived social support from friends.” The effects of a mother’s religious influence are not to be underestimated.

Now, the truth is, we know nothing about Mary’s attendance at religious services. But Luke 1 portrays her as so familiar with the worship tradition of prayer in the psalms of her Jewish faith that in a time of great joy—and great stress—she prayed a model prayer just like Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2 and in the Psalms, and her son grew up to pray a model prayer in Luke 11. Mary’s model prayer in verse 46-50 is hardly revolutionary, is it?

But look where Mary’s song goes in verses 51-53: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” This Mary is a revolutionary. This Mary is subversive. This Mary would squeeze the toothpaste in the middle of the tube!

Is it any wonder that Mary’s son would grow up to say, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled” (Luke 6:21), and “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (Luke 6:25)? Should anyone be surprised that Mary’s son would grow up to say, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20), and “woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward” (Luke 6:24)?

Mary the mother of Jesus was no Joan of Arc or Harriet Tubman or Gloria Steinem or Mary Daly, but she is no less revolutionary than they. The lullaby that Mary sang her baby in utero was the Magnificat—and not just the first four verses that could easily be mistaken for a first-century praise chorus. The lullaby that Mary sang her baby included verses 51-53: “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

And when she did, she planted the seeds of the longest lasting and most frequently recurring revolution in the history of humankind. Again and again through the centuries, Mary’s song and Mary’s son’s words and life and death and resurrection have fueled aspirations and acts of justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, freedom for those who are imprisoned, sight for the blind, the raising up of those who are bowed down, protection for strangers, and safekeeping for widows and orphans.

Down through the centuries, the church that carries Jesus’ name has often sided with the powerful and the proud; it has often sided with the rich and the wicked. But even when it does, you see, it carries with it the seeds of its own destruction in Mary’s song and Jesus’ words and life and death and resurrection. There is a model for us all and for Christ’s church in Mary the revolutionary.

Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as being but a tiny “mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches” (Luke 13:19). That’s a quiet revolution that is planted and nurtured entirely without the fanfare, pomp and circumstance of the powerful and the proud. Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God as being as imperceptible as the “yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened” (Luke 13:21). That’s a revolution in the making that no one even notices until it has already happened.

Many years ago, my parents took my two younger brothers and me to Williamsburg, Virginia. Before we wandered that reconstructed treasure, we watched a video that introduced the town, its history, and the beginnings of the American revolution. The video concluded with a stirring clip in which young men and old took up arms and marched away to resist the British. When it was over and the lights came back on in the little theater, my youngest brother, who was probably six years old at the time, turned to my mother and said enthusiastically, “Mother, where do we get the guns?” That’s the kind of revolution we’re all looking for. “Where do we get the guns?”

Whether the guns are literal or metaphorical, we are always susceptible to the devilish temptation to turn the kingdom of God into a kingdom of men and women by force and by power. Even in the church, we always want a revolution we can be proud of instead of humble in. We want a revolution that is big and powerful, not small and imperceptible, that grows unnoticed in a garden, that leavens a loaf without anyone even noticing.

And when we do, we reveal that our mission is not really for the oppressed or the hungry or the imprisoned or the blind or the bowed down or the strangers or the widows or the orphans at all, but it is for ourselves. We make the mistake of only singing Mary’s praise chorus—“the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name”—without moving on to sing and to live the rest of her revolutionary lullaby. The revolutionary lullaby is how the kingdom comes, how God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

In the earliest decades of the church, that revolutionary lullaby was lived out in an uncommon common meal in which Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rich and poor, Asians and Europeans and Africans all sat down together to eat and to drink in communion with God and in communion with one another. That’s the uncommon common meal we share this morning because Mary’s song is our song and Mary’s revolution is our revolution, small and unnoticed, imperceptible even, until someone looks around and says, “Look, there are Asians and Europeans and Africans and rich and poor and men and women and Jews and Gentiles all eating and drinking together in communion with God and in communion with one another in the kingdom of God, in heavenly peace, in peace on earth, goodwill toward all!”

It all goes back to Mary the revolutionary. Let’s eat and drink to the kingdom of God.


Photo by sarah.mckenzie11, used by license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

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Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15:4-13
The Second Sunday in Advent 2010

In my experience, it is a common homiletical hazard that sermon titles are required of me for purpose of worship planning long before the sermon is actually written. This congregation has become entirely too urbane and sophisticated to want to hear a preacher talk about “the word that the Lord has laid on my heart this morning,” so I will simply say, “Don’t bother asking what the sermon title in your order of worship has to do with the sermon you are about to hear.” I will only suggest that you do as I have done this week, and listen for a word from God.

Of all the beatific visions of the end in the Bible, this one in Isaiah 11:1-10 is my favorite. I don’t mean “my favorite” as in a favorite gum-chewing, lip-smacking, toe-tapping “Top-40” hit. I mean “my favorite” as the one that most strongly shapes my understanding of God and of the world and of the church and of you and me.

There are other beatific visions in the Bible, to be sure. There is the “new heaven and the new earth” in Revelation 21. There is the swords-into-plowshares vision in Isaiah 2 and Micah 4. There is Isaiah 40’s “Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low,” the crooked straight and the rough places plain that Gayle Gulley will sing in the Sanctuary shortly after 11:00 this morning. That aria is one of my very favorite parts of Handel’s Messiah. I suppose if I had grown up in Kansas, that might be my favorite beatific vision of them all, but as someone who has lived most of my childhood and adulthood alike on the eastern escarpment of the Blue Ridge, I need more topographical variety for a vision to be beatific. I need rocks, hills and plains to repeat the sounding joy. I need every mountainside to let freedom ring. Scripture provides us with a variety of beatific visions of the end, and for all their distinct particularities and qualities, all of them share three at least three features.

The first feature is peace. Peace. We light the candle of peace, and we sing, “O come, Desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind. Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease; fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.” Whether your favorite biblical beatific vision of the end-time is the new heaven and new earth or the swords-into-plowshares or every valley shall be exalted, or the wolf shall live with the lamb (without having to replace the lamb every so often), your favorite vision of the end-time speaks peace to the world of fear and conflict and tension and war around you. And it speaks peace to the world of fear and conflict and tension and war inside you. Peace is one of the three shared features of every beatific vision of the end in the Bible.

A second feature of all of them is that the beatific end-time vision of God’s peace is ushered in by divine device, not human artifice. With Christians the world over we prayed from The Book of Common Prayer this morning, “We . . . eagerly await the kingdom of your Son, the Prince of Peace who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit now and forever,” in acknowledgement that it is not our kingdom or our power or our glory that ushers in peace. It is God’s and God’s alone.

You have heard me say this before, and you will hear me say it again. The fatal spiritual flaw of the liberal Christian theology movement of a century ago and the fatal spiritual flaw of the conservative Christian theology of our own time is that both of them erroneously assume that they can build the kingdom of God by controlling the kingdoms of this world. By controlling the congresses and courtrooms and institutions and armies of this world, they believe they can usher in the beatific visions of the Bible. When liberals or conservatives either one begin to think that way they commit idolatry by vesting more faith and more control in themselves and their respective theologies and ideologies than they do in God. We human beings want peace on our own terms and we want it now, and so we push God and God’s long-awaited vision to the side to worship and serve ourselves and build our own beatific vision of the end. But God’s peace comes to the world around us and the world inside us by divine device, not human artifice.

A third shared feature of every beatific vision in the Bible is that each one of them and all of them together fulfill the function of the apostle Paul’s observation in Romans 15:4, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” So let me share with you this morning why when it comes to “the encouragement of the scriptures” and “steadfastness” Isaiah 11:1-10 is the beatific vision of the end-time that most speaks hope to me, the vision that most strongly shapes my understanding of God and the world and the church and you and me.

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion [shall feed] together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

It is often called “the peaceable kingdom,” this beatific vision in which carnivores and herbivores, predators and prey live in peaceful coexistence with each other. It is a picture of nature as you and I have never known it. You will not see it on “Animal Planet” or the “National Geographic Channel” or on “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” (I know that last one dates me, but so be it.) It is a picture of creation as God visions it, as God redeems, restores, renovates and regenerates it. If it were a “reality TV” show, it would be called “Extreme Makeover: Creation Edition.” It is a picture of nature and society and humanity as you and I have never known them.

It suggests that some day in some way there will come a time and an eternity when, to continue the popular reality-TV allusion, a harbinger of completion will call out, “Driver, move that bus!” And with that call will come the removal of the impediment to our seeing and to our being in a creation of God’s visioning, of God’s redeeming, restoring, renovating and regenerating: a new heaven and a new earth, swords-into-plowshares, every valley exalted and mountain made low, the leopard shall lie down with the kid (and the kid will still be there in the morning).

Some of us are closer to that vision than others of us are. A couple years ago, our staff prayed for and visited a teenager who was hospitalized for months, first at Greenville Memorial Hospital and then at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and then back at Greenville Memorial. More than once during that time the doctors called the family in because they believed the young man’s death was imminent. Late in his hospitalization and his genuinely miraculous recuperation, a few weeks before he was able to return home I asked his mother—who had literally been by his bedside for months—what had kept her going. What she said surprised me: “I already know how this is going to turn out,” she said. “God is going to heal my son. I want God to heal my son in this life, so I can take him home with me. But if that doesn’t happen, I know that God is going to heal my son in the life to come.”

You see, the driver had already moved the bus for her. She could already see her son redeemed, restored, renovated and regenerated; and that gave her steadfastness and encouragement and hope through an unbearable ordeal that was a parent’s worst nightmare. In the worst nightmares of the world around us and the world within us, the vision of the calf and the lion [feeding] together (not latter on the former) offers us steadfastness and encouragement and hope that our children’s lives and our own lives like the life of all creation, will be redeemed, restored, renovated and regenerated.

One reason I am especially fond of this particular vision in Isaiah 11:1-10 is that it emanates from a nightmare scenario. It begins with what looks for all practical purposes like a dead-end story. We have probably heard some of these words so many times that we are immune to their effect, especially this stuff about a root of Jesse and a stump and a shoot and a branch. I would remind you that it starts with a stump. The beatific vision in Isaiah 11:1-10 does not begin with a tree of life or a sapling or a seed even. It starts with a stump, a tree cut down, cut off, caput.

You may or may not remember that last month in a sermon on Isaiah 12, I said that in this portion of the book of Isaiah we are reading words spoken in and to Jerusalem in a time of great fear and uncertainty, a time of national and international terror and crisis and war. There were several times during the forty or maybe even fifty-year-long career of the prophet Isaiah that the hopes and fears of all the years had weighed heavily on Jerusalem and its people.

During the decades of Isaiah’s preaching, the powerful and ruthless Assyrian army, the greatest military machine the ancient Near East had ever known to that day invaded Israel in the north in 732 B.C.E., and then captured its capital Samaria in 721 B.C.E., and eventually besieged Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E. after decimating Judah in the south in a march with siege engines and infantry against walled cities that makes William Tecumseh Sherman look like a child playing with tin soldiers.

In whichever moment of fear and uncertainty, national and international terror and crisis and war these words of Isaiah were first spoken, it was as though there was nothing but a stump left, a dead-end story at the close of a nightmare scenario. And yet, in the midst of an unbearable ordeal, it is as though for Isaiah of Jerusalem the driver had already moved the bus, because beneath the stump he could see the root, and from the root he could see a shoot, and the shoot he could see a branch, and the branch became a sign that God was not finished with God’s people, collectively or individually, that God was not finished with God’s creation but that God had redemption, restoration, renovation and regeneration in mind.

When you are cut down and cut off, when it is as though your life or your faith or your family or your church or whatever is near and dear to you has been mowed down level to the ground, I would remind you that it starts with a stump.

More than ten years ago, I cut down two crepe myrtles in my front yard. I hated to do it because I love crepe myrtles, but in the typical overdo-it landscaping of suburban America, the original owners of the house Bev and I live in chose to plant a dogwood tree flanked by a pair of crepe myrtles. I’m sure they were an exquisite combination when they were young, but as they grew and aged, they became competitors for space and sunlight and moisture and nutrients. And as fond as I am of crepe myrtles, I am fonder still of dogwood trees; and so I cut the crepe myrtles down to the ground, leaving two stumps on either side of the tree. And for more than a decade, I weeded and wacked and mowed crepe myrtle shoots in my yard until this fall I finally hired a man to pull them out with a truck.

You see, all God needs in God’s creation, all God needs in our lives and our faith and our family and our church is but a stump with a root in order for life and hope to be God’s tenacious and ongoing words. In Romans 15, when the apostle Paul mentions “the root of Jesse” in verse 12, he cannot help himself but to break into a marvelous benediction in verse 13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

The Advent message this year and every year is that God is not finished with God’s people, collectively and individually, and God is not finished with God’s creation. God still has redemption, restoration, renovation and regeneration in mind and under way. My hope and my prayer for you this Advent is that if only for briefest glimpse, God will give you the gift of being able to see beyond the stump, to see beyond the dead-end, beyond the nightmare, beyond whatever fear or uncertainty or terror or ordeal you may be experiencing to the beatific vision of God.

So, with apologies to Ty Pennington and the entire crew of the popular reality-TV series, I will be praying for you: “Driver, move that bus.” “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Amen.

Bus photo from The Port of San Diego, used under license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.