The arrival of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem was preceded by the arrival centuries earlier of the baby Isaac to Sarah in her old age. These two babies embrace the history and the progress of God’s people in getting to know and to love Him.

Isaac’s birth from Sarah was a public miracle witnessed and received by many as an act of God. Isaac’s birth brought laughter and joy not only to Sarah, but as she herself exclaimed, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” (Genesis 21:6) Isaac was revered throughout his life as a man of God.

The birth of Jesus, descendant of Isaac, however, was wrapped in secrecy and visited by the shepherds who heard the angels’ message of the baby’s arrival and of his identity from God. Even the visit of the wise men ended in secrecy, as they “left by a different route” to avoid informing Herod. (Matthew 2:12) Soon after, Jesus was brought to Egypt for his safety.

Two miraculous baby boys frame the progression of God’s plan for redeeming His creation. Each baby was deeply loved and protected by his human parents. Each one tapped a wellspring of love in his parents that drew them and eventually others, to a deeper love for God Himself. When God spoke of His love for Israel, His strongest comparison was a mother’s love for her infant: “Can a mother forget the baby she has borne? Though she may forget, I will never forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15) God’s love for His people is stronger even than maternal love, a love which everyone can know and recognize.

God gave Isaac to his parents as a gift of love and also of covenant. Isaac was the fulfillment of a promise, creating a bond anchored in parental love. Jesus, too, was a gift of love and of covenant. He was the fulfillment of a promise to Mary as well as to the whole world, of a savior who would bring salvation to human kind: For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given. . . and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of peace. (Isaiah 9:6) The baby Jesus was nurtured in the arms of Mary and Joseph, and he became the bridge between us and our God, the fulfillment of all of God’s promises in Jesus’ love and obedience to his Father God.

Love in Him,

Prue

The interaction between God’s angels and human beings has a very long history. Jacob wrestled with an angel before he went to meet Esau, his brother. Jacob insisted on being blessed before he released the angel, and Jacob received a new name: Israel. “Please tell me your name”, Jacob said. But the angel refused. (Genesis 32:29)

Manoah, the father of Samson,was told by an angel that Manoah’s wife would have a son. Manoah asked the angel of the Lord, “What is your name?” He replied, Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding.” (Judges 13:17-18)

Daniel overheard the name of an angel in a vision:. . . There before me stood one who looked like a man. I heard a man’s voice. . . calling, “Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of the vision!” (Daniel 8:15)

Many centuries separate these encounters from the dramatic scene in the Holy of Holies when an angel appeared to Zechariah and gave him the news that Zechariah’s wife, Elizabeth , would have a baby boy in her old age. The angel’s response to Zechariah’s initial disbelief was, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God. I have been sent to. . .tell you this good news. (Luke 1:19)

Finally this same Gabriel was sent to a young woman living in Nazareth. She never so much as asked for his name or for any other “credentials.” The simplicity of Mary’s response, and her choice to visit Elizabeth, reveal a whole soul accepting God’s will: I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. (Luke 1:38)

Perhaps Mary learned late that the angel who visited her was named Gabriel: All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about these things. (Luke 1:65)

Advent is a time to read and think about the Bible. Chasing Gabriel through his unnamed friends to his astounding announcement to Mary made me better appreciate the role of angels in God’s universe. They are the engines God chose to represent Himself to His creation, and to further His plan for humanity. We know the names of only two of them: Michael, and the messenger who announced, “I am Gabriel.”

Love in Him,

Prue

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has become a holiday almost bigger than Thanksgiving itself. In one way it really is bigger, for merchants of all kinds announce that “Black Friday” will begin the week before Thanksgiving, and continue for the whole following week, while Thanksgiving lasts for one delicious meal and an afternoon at best. I have heard of people who have left the table to get in line at a “Black Friday” sale.

St. Augustine lived from 354—430 AD, long before the western hemisphere was even discovered by Europeans. He preached about our love for “gold.” Speaking for the Lord, he said, “But you say to Me, ‘ Isn’t gold a good thing, then?’ “Certainly gold is a good thing. But bad people do bad things with good gold. So because you can see the sort of people I’ve given it to, ask me for better things; ask me for more excellent things; ask me for spiritual things; ask me for Myself.” (St. Augustine, sermon no. 311)

Jesus spoke strongly to his disciples: For everyone who asks receives: the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matthew7:8) Here he is not speaking about “gold” but about asking, seeking, and knocking on God’s door to find Him. Jesus’ promise is astounding, but St. Augustine echoes it from personal experience, as he himself searched for many years before he found the treasure that is in Christ. Neither Augustine nor Jesus denies the goodness of the substance “gold,” but each looks higher and more clearly to something better: What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or, what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? (Mark 8: 36)

Next Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent, a time of preparation when the church encourages reflection and meditation in our own spirits, especially concerning the birth of Christ. It’s in him that we are even able to look for, seek, and ask, and with full assurance from the mouth of God’s son, to receive. When God sent that baby, He made it clear that He was sending Himself. Augustine said it simply: “Ask for Myself.”

We couldn’t do better during Advent, than to spend our meditations on that very request. Such a request would spill over into our every day lives in unexpected blessing, for we know that there is nothing closer to God’s heart than to grant that request.

Love in Him,

Prue

Ripe Harvest

I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for a harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life. . . (John 4:35-36)

Once I asked a class if they believed that the “fields” are still “ripe unto harvest.” I was surprised that the answer was mixed. No one felt sure that it was either way, and several felt that the Gospel had been preached for so long and in so many places that the fields might actually be shrinking. I was disappointed because I was convinced that Jesus’ words are even more urgent today. The whiteness of the fields was a statement and an assurance to the disciples that even in Samaria, where they were resting, hearts and minds were ready to receive the the Word of God. If that were somehow no longer true,we would all be in despair when we looked at “the fields.”

Soon after this discussion Jack and I visited Caprock Canyon with some friends. As we drove to the canyon we passed a large cotton field that looked withered and dead as the result of a drought. I felt a regret for the farmer and for the potential that such a large field had held.

We stayed in the canyon all day and in the late afternoon headed home. The sun was still bright as we passed the cotton field and I could hardly believe my eyes. I asked, “Is this the same way we came this morning?” “Yes,” our friend , who was driving answered, “why?” I said, “Look at that field!” In that one day the cotton had burst open . I stared and stared, and the others in the truck were amazed, too. “Are you sure this is the same field?” I asked. “Yes, yes. It’s just that the cotton has bloomed in the one day, and what a sight!” said our friend.

For me it was more than just “a sight.” I couldn’t help thinking that my earlier disappointment had been healed. I believed with all my heart that the fields are really, truly, ready for harvest, and that they have been ready for more than two thousand years, and even in that time some “reapers” have known it and have reaped a harvest and a crop for eternal life. Thanksgiving is a time for reaping friendships and relationships, and for celebrating the harvest of souls who acknowledge Christ’s offer of eternal life. I will never forget the sight of a cotton field almost blindingly white in the sun, so very ready for harvest.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Love in Him,

Prue

The Christian holidays bring us busyness unlike any other in the year. It’s as if we know that we need to get on a train to a new destination in our relationship with God, and so we hurry to the station, but when we arrive, there are so many distractions, that we could even miss the train.

We know that the “still small voice” (1Kings 12: 11-12) is speaking to us, but if you let them, the much louder noises of the season are capable of drowning it out. Arriving at the station we find shops and attractions that can be irresistible unless we remember to expect that voice.

When Elijah heard that voice, it conveyed to him information that he could not have known before, as well as a role and a mission for himself in the unfolding history of Israel. Elijah received confirmation of his close relationship with God, and specific instructions for his ministry. He also received a sense of kinship with a holy God, that enabled him to persevere in fulfilling his calling. We all need the still small voice, but especially at holiday time. The still small voice engaged Elijah in a conversation. It was not a monologue, but a question and answer. The noise of the world, however, is insistent and pervasive.

Thanksgiving is full of chatter, often joyful, re-uniting chatter, but Thanksgiving also invites reflection. Once on the train to the holidays there is room for reflection, but the station is still distracting until we get on the the train. When the train doors close, and it starts to move, we must settle down and wait. The psalmist wrote, He says, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm46:10)

The buying and selling is finished and events are planned. The priceless time of remembering and listening comes naturally on the train. This is God’s desire for Thanksgiving and for Christmas: time alone with each of us. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with wordless groans. (Romans 8:26)

We become like children when we finally enter the train, find our seat, and remember the One who called the very journey into being, the One behind and within the celebration and the holidays themselves.

Love in Him,

Prue

Nell, a Christian friend of mine who had many times been on mission trips, especially to disaster areas, once said to me that she knew that God had forgiven her for her past, before she had been a believer, but she knew that she had sometimes sinned against God Himself, and so she could not forgive herself. Her sin, whatever it was, weighed upon her conscience, and she could not escape it. No amount of my talking and listening with her ever change her mind, that I could see.

I believe that there must be many people who “hug “ their sins in an embrace of regret and even sorrow, and I realized that I had been one , too, from time to time. The scriptures, though, leave no room for regret or self blame. They make it clear that clothing ourselves in regret is like putting on a heavy armor to resist the Spirit of God from entering and removing the stain: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything. (1 John 3:20)

The apostle John witnessed the resurrected Jesus and knew, as eleven of the disciples did, that God had reversed the monstrous evil of the cross, and that a new day had arrived in the relationship of God and human beings. That which we could not even imagine has occurred, and those who are willing to grasp the hand of the living Christ and drop their armor altogether, can experience this reality even thousands of years after the events.

God’s forgiveness, and His reach into human hearts was displayed even in the Old Testament. The psalmist wrote these words: Whom have I in heaven but you? And beside you I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25) Even before the appearance of Jesus on earth, the psalmist recognized the great power of God that was greater than the failings of our hearts. It is a hope that requires the abandoning of our own selves to receive God’s better Spirit of redemption.

Corrie Ten Boom famously wrote, “God takes our sins and buries them in the deepest part of the sea and then posts a sign: ‘No Fishing!’” We can spend our lives fishing for regrets, or we can give them all to God, who knows us better than we know ourselves; and we have a brother who has opened the way for us to our Father God. He, too, knows everything.

Love in Him,

Prue

During my growing up years, our grandmother lived with us periodically. She always tried to make herself useful, but we really loved her for her stories, and some of her most endearing gifts were the cookies she baked in the afternoon just before we came home from school. When my brother and sisters and I walked into the house we could smell fresh cookies most days. They would be laid out on the kitchen table. On the way home we speculated about whether they would be molasses, sour cream, or chocolate with white icing. Each of us had our favorite, but we were actually just hungry, and we liked all her flavors.

My mother often reminded us that not all children had fresh cookies after school, and that “some day” we would appreciate this gift. I wondered what she meant. Isn’t eating a cookie the only way to appreciate it? And weren’t we doing that? Afterwards we went outside to play, or stayed in to do homework. Usually we thanked Grandma. I never imagined what “some day” meant, or what would happen to make me “appreciate” more than I did that day.

The Bible is full of references to a “day”in the future that is called “that day.” It is a “day” when wrong will be made right: The eyes of the arrogant will be humbled, and human pride brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. (Isaiah 2:11) Jesus also spoke to his disciples of a “day” ahead when God’s presence would be known, and the disciples would have a new, direct access to Jesus’ Father God. Jesus makes Isaiah’s words personal and real for the disciples: In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me and believed that I came from God.” (John 16:26-27) St. Paul, who never saw Jesus before the the resurrection, wrote to his friend Timothy about himself, and about “that day”: I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. (2 Timothy 1:12)

In today’s world I can only imagine baking cookies almost every school day in time for the grandchildren to have them when they get home. I begin to have an inkling of what my mother meant by saying “Some day” I would understand.

Jesus speaks openly to his disciples about a “day” when their relationship with God will change. It will be characterized by a Father’s love, and it will draw them closer to Jesus himself. In “that day” is a promise to each of us, as well.

Love in Him,

Prue

When I first read in the book of Hebrews that “The law made nothing perfect, and a better hope is introduced.” (Hebrews 7:19), I wondered how “Hope” could in any way be “better. Does “hope” come in “good,” “ better,” and “best”? Is “hope” even measurable at all? But when I read on about the contrast that the writer was drawing between the faith of the Hebrews under the direction and discipline of Moses, and the relationship of believers to their God in the light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, I saw that there were indeed two kinds of “Hope,” and that the distinguishing difference is the difference between time and eternity.

Almost everyone on earth experiences hope for happy outcomes of events and experiences and relationships; and almost everyone ignores the promise in the Bible that there is an entire life, without ending, of grace that fills our hopes with joy. We believe in short term peace and happiness, but “eternity” is dismissed as somehow irrelevant, in spite of the evidence in scripture of another life that happens not to have an end: As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the son and in the Father. And this is what He promised us—eternal life. ( John 2:24)

Is it because eternity seems incomprehensible, that we turn away and say we have too much to do with the here and now to contemplate eternity. Yet, God Himself, and Jesus our friend and brother, are both eternal. Their lives were extended to us at Jesus’ resurrection. This is what he talked about , when he said, “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the son and believes in him shall have eternal life. ( John 6:40) It’s God’s eternal life he is offering to those who believe in His son.

The Greeks and Romans valued eternal life so much that they made up stories that allowed them to believe that people could become constellations, thereby receiving a form of eternity; but God, who was and is and will be eternal, gave Himself in giving His son, that we might receive true eternity, not as another “thing,” but as our selves: Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

We shall be like the eternal son of God. It is indeed a better hope.

Love in Him,

Prue

The first time that I can remember ever being really, really thirsty was in a gym class in seventh grade. We had had a “work out” involving apparatus and mats, and finally a “few” laps around the gym. We were all sitting on the floor around the gym teacher, and to this day I have no idea what she was saying, as I was fantasizing a cold glass of water, and then I thought of a class of 7UP. It occurred to me that this might be the way that people living in deserts felt when they ran out of water. I would have been desperate, except that I remembered that there was a drinking fountain on the way to the girls’ locker room.

Thirst is a compelling sensation that takes he place of all other interests when it is strong. Isaiah the prophet spoke God’s words of invitation when he wrote: Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come buy and eat!. . . Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good. . . Give ear and come to me; listen that you may live.”(Isaiah 55:1&3) Thirst can be an all consuming need when we are dry; and relieving thirst is a great fulfillment of our need and desire.

Hundreds of years after God’s words to Isaiah, Jesus himself spoke of thirst, and the only real way to quench it: On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39) This is one of the strongest metaphors for God’s relationship to His people and for our relationship to Him.

On the cross, Jesus himself experienced his own need for the words from Isaiah. It’s even more poignant in the context of Jesus’ earlier words: Jesus said, “I thirst”. . . and when he had receive the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished!” With that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:28) Physical thirst is perhaps the closest picture of spiritual thirst. Jesus thirsted in response to his Father’s call to “come all you who are thirsty”. All of this was displayed in front of his mother and a few others, including John, for their benefit as well as ours, that we may follow the stream and know that it leads to the living water in Jesus and our Father God.

Love in Him,

Prue