*Advent is a wonderful time for new readers to join us. At this time of year we are covering familiar biblical content and people are open to spiritual pursuits. Also at this time, people desperately need the balance of spiritual practice that The Park Forum provides. In this season, consider sharing our devotionals with others and inviting them to join our community. Share a link to this devotional, or this subscription link, or use the sharing links included in the sidebar to help them join us.

Scripture Focus: 1 John 3.16-18
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

Reflection: Of Waiting and Giving :: Hope of Advent
By John Tillman

Advent, which could be a pleasant time of anticipating God’s gift, has become a stressful time of accumulating other gifts. 

Rather than counting the days until the gift of Christ is given, we count the days left to purchase gifts for others. Blessing others with generosity is a good practice all year long, but consumer culture twists gift-giving into a selfish game of reciprocation. We give presents in order to get them as well.

The two practices could not have more different effects on our souls. As we count diminishing shopping days, the weighty dread of worldly expectations is piled upon us like the debt we incur through our spending. As we count diminishing days until the gift of Christ arrives, the heady joy of heavenly expectations lifts our souls, removing the debt we incur through our sin.

So do we boycott giving? By no means.

No matter how twisted our culture becomes, there are always ways to live redemptively in it. Christians have always excelled at reclaiming customs fouled by greed (or any other form of sin or idolatry) and refurbishing them with a gospel flair. 

So as you hear the trumpeting of diminishing shopping days, pushing you toward consumeristic fervor,  think of the trumpets that will announce Christ’s second advent that will bring an end to striving and selfishness.

As you purchase gifts for those dear to you, remember how dear you are to God that he would spend so recklessly to redeem you.

As you push through throngs and mobs of travelers and shoppers, remember the throngs of travelers that filled Bethlehem’s beds, pushing our outcast Savior to sleep in a manger. Think of the crowds that pressed in, hoping to hear his message. Think of the mobs who beat, spit on, and stripped him, nailing him to the cross as he fulfilled the gospel on our behalf.

And as you remember how Christ gave…give, and give, and give. What are you waiting for? 

Give to those around you, to your loved ones, and to those organizations making a difference in the world. Give to those who can’t give back. Give until the only explanation for your generosity is that Christ is giving through you.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Let us make a vow to the Lord our God and keep it; let all around him bring gifts to him who is worthy to be feared. — Psalm 76.11

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 3-4 (Listen -5:42) 
1 John 3 (Listen -3:21)

Thank You, Donors!
Thanks to our donors, in 2019 we will publish approximately 100,000 words of free, and ad-free, devotional content. Without donor support, continuing this ministry would be impossible. As the end of the year approaches, consider whether the Holy Spirit might be prompting you to help support our 2020 content with an end-of-year gift or by becoming a monthly donor. Follow this link to our giving page.

Read more about Hope on a Limb :: Hope of Advent
What we hope for in Advent is not a resource of earthly wealth, success, fame, and power.

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*Advent is a wonderful time for new readers to join us. At this time of year we are covering familiar biblical content and people are open to spiritual pursuits. Also at this time, people desperately need the balance of spiritual practice that The Park Forum provides. In this season, consider sharing our devotionals with others and inviting them to join our community. Share a link to this devotional, or this subscription link, or use the sharing links included in the sidebar to help them join us.

Scripture Focus: John 2.8-9
I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness.

Reflection: The God of Light, in the Dark
By John Tillman

We may, at times, speak of darkness as an analogy for evil or for sin, and biblical authors do as well. However, actual darkness is not evil in itself. God created light and darkness and rules in each equally. We hide our sins in darkness, but only out of our ignorance. Darkness hides nothing from God. Our sins hidden in the dark, to God, may as well be in a spotlight before the world.

It is God, says the psalmist, who gives songs in the night and through the darkness of the heavens pours forth speech. In this way, the movements of the heavens were chosen by the ancient church as a teaching tool to show us God’s light coming into the world at the time of gathering darkness.

The darkness is not dark to our God. He is moving in the darkness, coming closer to us than we could stand him being. The presence of his glory is too much for us. The knowledge of his holiness is to great for us. The full light of his presence, is blinding to us. So, God draws down the veil of dark at the end of the year. He creeps up to us cautiously and secretly, so that we can be close to him. 

The time of Advent, of waiting in the deepening darkness, may seem to us as if we are huddled around the waning light in fear of evil. But the dark is also used by God to herd us close and near, so that he can intimately, softly, and gently reveal himself to us.

This is the glory of the incarnation— that God draws us in and shows us the fullness of who he is and what he is like in the form of a baby. He was hidden in the darkness of the womb, hidden in the darkness of the night of his birth, hidden in the arms of peasants from the eyes of the powerful. He was revealed to the outcasts, the unworthy, the foreigners, and the humble.

So may he be revealed to us. So, may we wait—humble, outcast, huddled in intimacy, hearing God’s approach in the dark. Come, Lord Jesus.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading
Jesus said: “For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved… — John 3.16-17

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 2 (Listen -3:41) 
1 John 2 (Listen -4:04)

Thank You, Donors!
Thanks to our donors, in 2019 we will publish approximately 100,000 words of free, and ad-free devotional content. Without donor support, continuing this ministry would be impossible. As the end of the year approaches, consider whether the Holy Spirit might be prompting you to help support our 2020 content with an end-of-year gift or by becoming a monthly donor. Follow this link to our giving page.

Read more about The Gift of Hope :: Hope of Advent
At the year’s darkest point, humanity waits until the light returns, like a second Easter.

Read more about supporting our ministry
When you donate to The Park Forum, you are investing…in words of life, words of encouragement, and words to build up our readers across the world in love.

*Advent is a wonderful time for new readers to join us. At this time of year we are covering familiar biblical content and people are open to spiritual pursuits. Also at this time, people desperately need the balance of spiritual practice that The Park Forum provides. In this season, consider sharing our devotionals with others and inviting them to join our community. Share a link to this devotional, or this subscription link, or use the sharing links included in the sidebar to help them join us.

Scripture Focus: 1 John 1.1
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.

Reflection: This We Proclaim :: Hope of Advent
By John Tillman

What are we waiting for in Advent? A day on the calendar, yes. But there is more.

In Advent we begin with hope. But our hope is not a wispy, wishful, thread. Christmas is sure and expected, arriving steadfastly in boxes checked off on a calendar and boxes packed and opened in times of gift-giving. Eventually, the day will pass, the season will move on and we begin waiting for the day of Christmas all over again. But the day we wait for on the calendar is merely symbolic and is not the actual day we are truly longing for.

Christmas Day is not the day that Jesus was born. Only badly written holiday cards and holiday movies believe that. The ancient church did not fix the celebration of Advent around the winter solstice because of history, but because of pedagogy. Celebrating the birth of Christ as light coming into the world, just at the time at which our world is at its darkest point was not an accident and it wasn’t cultural appropriation. Ancient Christians looked at their understanding of cosmology and saw the maker of the cosmos behind the movements. They measured the observable scientific data of the movements of the heavens and saw an analogy placed there by the maker of those heavenly movements.

At the time when we are farthest from the light, Light itself steps closer to us.
At the time when the world is the darkest, God appears as light.
At the time when all seems to be sinking, God rises and raises us with him.

John, whose gospel is more of an artistic logical argument rather than a historical logical document, leaves us no room to suspect that the events he recorded were fables or myths or legends. In his letters John unequivocally affirms the reality of his account of Christ. He, together with the other Apostles and disciples, touched and saw and heard the intangible, invisible, unknowable God in the person of Jesus Christ.

In Advent, we wait literally for a day on the calendar. In waiting for this day, we are only learning to wait for the return of the tangible, visible Christ. We see now as in a glass, darkly, then we will know face to face. And just as surely as the day on the calendar will return, so will also return, this same Jesus. As we wait, we learn to hope. Come, Lord Jesus!

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Psalm 118.23

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 1 (Listen -2:47) 
1 John 1 (Listen -1:28)

Thank You, Donors!
Thanks to our donors, in 2019 we will publish approximately 100,000 words of free, and ad-free devotional content. Without donor support, continuing this ministry would be impossible. As the end of the year approaches, consider whether the Holy Spirit might be prompting you to help support our 2020 content with an end-of-year gift or by becoming a monthly donor. Follow this link to our giving page.

Read more about Expectation Affects Anticipation :: Hope of Advent
The gifts we anticipate have already been purchased at great cost, and contain more than we can ever hope for.

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