Tag: Luke 1

Expect Christ: Day 26

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Today is Thursday, Dec. 22, the twenty-sixth day in the Advent season.

Morning

Praise and Thanksgiving.

As we draw closer to Christmas, let’s pray with Mary, lifting up Luke 1:46-55 and expressing our belief that mercy is truly shown from one generation to the next, so long as we honor God.

Let’s also pray this together:

“Lord, your grace and mercy are evident in the story we move toward celebrating, the birth of Jesus Christ. Thank you for your overwhelming, powerful love. Continue to sustain us with the Holy Spirit until such time as we we see the fiery, wooly-haired Christ before us, injecting truth into a false world in need of remaking. Amen.”

What other words of thanks and praise might we lift up?

Confession. Let’s quietly search our hearts once again for what is within us that is not of God.

Petitions. As we move toward celebrating the great truth that changes the world, let’s once again pray from global concerns down to personal concerns, seeking how we might be the answer to some of the problems around us.

Scripture: Revelation 22:6-20.

Silence.

Noon

Let’s continue to pray this prayer together daily:

“Lord, we are in a season of expectation. We remember the Israelites’ past desire for a savior to arrive, and we mirror what they felt as we long now for the return of Jesus Christ. Come Lord Jesus, come! We pray this with some trepidation, knowing we never feel completely ready for such a day, and that loved ones around us may not be ready. And yet we continue to pray, Come Lord Jesus, come! We trust that your grace at your return will so overwhelm sin and death that all will be set right. As we pray for your full arrival, teach us how to make ourselves ready, living as watchful people. Amen.”

Night

At a minimum, let’s spend some significant time in a quiet, reflective state before retiring for the night. Embrace the day’s spiritual victories and release the failures.

Sleep well. May visions of Christ in the manger and Christ to come pervade your dreams.

Expect Christ: Day 22

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to the fourth Sunday of Advent. Next Sunday is Christmas Day! As part of your Sabbath, I pray you are able to attend or participate in group worship in some way. Proper formal worship will incorporate all the aspects of our daily prayers. As I’ve said before, the prayer patterns established over six days of the week lead us to a Sabbath of constant spiritual communion with God.

Here’s a text for today, one you may hear in worship:

Luke 1:46-55

Mary said,

“With all my heart I glorify the Lord!
    In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.
He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.
    Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored
        because the mighty one has done great things for me.
Holy is his name.
    He shows mercy to everyone,
        from one generation to the next,
        who honors him as God.
He has shown strength with his arm.
    He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations.
    He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones
        and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty-handed.
He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
        remembering his mercy,
    just as he promised to our ancestors,
        to Abraham and to Abraham’s descendants forever.”

What a joy for Mary, full of the Spirit that has conceived the divine child inside her. She is able to glimpse the effects Jesus will have on the world. Some of these effects we still anticipate today.

Where has God met us in our lowliness and meekness?

Expect Christ: Day 15

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to the third Sunday of Advent. Again, you are encouraged to treat Sunday as a true Sabbath, attending worship, where we have many opportunities to pray. Also, disconnect from the patterns of the week as much as possible! Believe it or not, God actually encourages us to do nothing of worldly importance from time to time. Ideally, the prayer patterns established over six days of the week lead you to a Sabbath of constant spiritual communion with God.

Here’s a text to consider today, as we move closer to the story of the incarnation.

Luke 1:67-69
John’s father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied,

“Bless the Lord God of Israel
    because he has come to help and has delivered his people.
He has raised up a mighty savior for us in his servant David’s house,
    just as he said through the mouths of his holy prophets long ago.
He has brought salvation from our enemies
    and from the power of all those who hate us.
He has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
    and remembered his holy covenant,
        the solemn pledge he made to our ancestor Abraham.
He has granted that we would be rescued
        from the power of our enemies
    so that we could serve him without fear,
        in holiness and righteousness in God’s eyes,
            for as long as we live.
You, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High,
    for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way.
You will tell his people how to be saved
    through the forgiveness of their sins.
Because of our God’s deep compassion,
    the dawn from heaven will break upon us,
    to give light to those who are sitting in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
        to guide us on the path of peace.”

Here are some questions I would suggest as you dwell on these words. If you’re not familiar with Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, you might want to back up in Luke and understand his full story.

What would it be like to prophesy about your own child’s future?

Do we see how Christ marks a new dawn, one that guides us on the path to peace?

Checking In

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

My apologies for the lack of devotions these last couple of mornings. Pastoral duties sometimes become demanding, making it difficult to find time to write something thoughtful.

Now is a good time to mention that Methodist Life welcomes submissions from new writers and artists. We tend to work from the daily lectionary readings, but I personally deviate from those texts from time to time, and submissions do not have to be built around them. As editor, all I ask is that you represent traditional Christianity well while not minding some editing when necessary. If you want to submit something, send it to chuck@methodist.life.

For your consideration today, I offer you an article I wrote for the Jonesborough Herald and Tribune while pastor of Fairview United Methodist Church more than a decade ago.

Heart Wide Open

By Chuck Griffin

How open are you to God’s influence?

Most of us who call ourselves Christian would like to think we are very open. And indeed, a lot of Christians allow God to influence them in ways that change their lives dramatically.

Often, you run into Christians who have given up careers and financial security to serve God.

Occasionally, you meet people who for long periods of time give up the comfort and familiarity of home to serve others in far-away places. For example, I once met a missionary who had gone to Papua New Guinea as a young woman in the early 1970s. She had felt God calling her to translate the New Testament for a tribe of people who speak an obscure language.

By 2005, she had finished the work. I met her while she was in Kentucky, a much older woman saying a last good-bye to her relatives. She loved the tribal people so much that she had decided to live with them the rest of her life.

Rarely, you meet people who face death to follow God’s lead. Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, falls in this category.

Stoning was the punishment of the day for a poor, unwed pregnant girl, which is how her neighbors would have viewed Mary. To follow God while facing such dire circumstances required a heart wide open to God’s influence.

God chose Mary, it seems, because she had the right soul for the job. She was young, perhaps as young as 14, but Scripture records in the first chapter of Luke her remarkable understanding of the meaning of Christ’s coming.

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant,” Mary said. She was rejoicing with her much older cousin Elizabeth, who carried in her womb John the Baptist, the prophet who would announce the coming of Jesus’ ministry in adulthood.

As Mary continued in her rejoicing, she laid out the radical mission of Christ. He brings mercy to those who believe and follow God. He scatters the proud. He brings down the powerful. He lifts up the lowly and the hungry. He does all of this as a fulfillment of a promise made to the world through Abraham long ago.

And of course, we now understand that Jesus grew up to accomplish this radical realignment of power through his death on the cross, a sacrifice designed to break the grip of sin.

Governments and armies still seem to have power, but none can help you establish a relationship with God. At best, they can keep the relationship freely available.

If you believe, really believe, in the saving work of Christ, it becomes more difficult each day to see your place in the world in secular ways. How open are you to God’s influence?

The answer has a lot to do with how much of this world you’re willing to risk while knowing a better world is guaranteed.

God in Art: Zechariah

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment
Domenico Ghirlandaio, “Zechariah Writes Down the Name of His Son,” 1490

No, that baby in the fresco, found in the Tornabuoni Chapel in Florence, Italy, isn’t Jesus. He is John the Baptist, cousin to Jesus and the one who would announce the coming of the Messiah. Today is a good day to consider the story of his father, Zechariah. In particular, you might want to take time to hear his “song,” the prophetic declaration he makes when his tongue is unleashed.

The Zechariah Effect

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment
Zechariah and the Angel Gabriel

Luke 1:18: Zechariah said to the angel, “How can I be sure this will happen? I’m an old man now, and my wife is also well along in years.”

There is an odd reaction people sometimes have to gifts from God. I call it the “Zechariah Effect.”

We receive what we have so long desired. Clearly, what we receive is a blessing from God. And yet, we question whether what is happening is real.

I guess we could also call this the “Sarah Effect.” After all, Abraham’s wife laughed when she heard from a divine source that she would bear a child in old age.

The opposite to these startled, inappropriate responses is Mary’s response to hearing from the angel Gabriel that she would bear Christ. After asking a childlike “how” question, she simply replied, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”

Be sure to read the full story of how Zechariah learned he and his wife would have a child in old age, a child who would come to be known as John the Baptist. (I preached about him last Sunday.) There’s no doubt Zechariah knew an angel standing in a very holy place was telling him good news. He simply struggled to believe!

Some of you may have ideas regarding why we might react to divine gifts in such ways. I can think of at least a couple of possibilities.

First, it’s possible we’ve lived with a particular form of brokenness for so long that we have learned to accommodate it, using little mind tricks to keep our related sadness or dysfunction at bay. It can be disturbing to discover God is going to disrupt our stasis, even if we’ve been preserving something negative in our lives.

Second, maybe we’re discovering our faith isn’t as strong as we thought. Even with a miracle before us, our human doubts may briefly outrun the increase in faith we are going to receive from the experience.

By biblical standards, Zechariah’s punishment was relatively mild. Sarah was chastised, but just slightly. It would appear God is patient with our human reactions, even if he does want a more Mary-like faith from us.

Lord, grant us not only the changes we seek for our lives, but the wisdom to recognize when they have arrived. Amen.