Living Story Grace

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve mostly been enjoying time with my family rather than writing this blog. Today I had enough time to re-post excerpts of an encouragement from the past. Praying you find a few minutes to rejoice that Jesus has already come to our longing hearts…

One of my favorite Christmas hymns is “Come, thou long-expected Jesus.” I love it because everytime we sing it, I am reminded that Jesus has already arrived. Check out the first stanza:

Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel’s Strength and Consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear Desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

“Come thou long-expected Jesus.” Indeed. Come, Lord Jesus come! Right about now, doesn’t this one line alone capture where your heart is? Christmas details causing chaos? Come, thou long-expected Jesus. Family togetherness raising tension? Come, thou long-expected Jesus. Economic forecast raining on your planned parade? Come, thou long-expected Jesus.

Perhaps you are like me, a little shy and apprehensive about those command performance seasonal parties. Perhaps you are like me, and somehow the days leading up to Christmas seem to draw to the surface not the best of humanity but the very worst of your sin nature. Perhaps you, like me, as you look toward the New Year, have tremendous hopes mixed with fair-to-middlin’ fears. If so, you, like me, need to move past the one-line prayer to the rest of the sentence: “Born to set thy people free. From our sins and fears release us; let us find our rest in thee.” Any and all of these sentences have become a ready one-line prayer as I step into situations that without Christ teem with possibility for sin, fear, and restlessness. The good news is that I really can step out of the craziness, sit near a fire and take a long draw from the homemade hot chocolate and ask Jesus to “let me find my rest in him.”

This is a continuation from yesterday’s post.  Check there for the words to the hymn.

The second stanza reminds us that Christ came with a purpose that is the outflow of his deliverance – to bring his kingdom. It begins by reminding us of the paradox and the apparent folly that God’s King was born as a child. Who are you? “A nobody?” A shepherd, a young girl, an ordinary mom, an accountant? The child King was born to deliver you, ordinary, extraordinary, dignified, depraved, God-created human. And so we do beg him to bring His gracious kingdom to our hearts, to our world.

The last four lines take me back to a very real war played out in my heart every day. Yesterday provides a perfect example. I was driving my daughter 4 hours to her 4 week checkup after shoulder surgery. The trip there went relatively well. The doctor’s appointment went extremely well, as did the visit to the physical therapist – both agreed her shoulder looked great and her prognosis was excellent. We were having a nice day. And then things began to fall apart. I was tired and irritable from getting up so early.

Starbucks sold me a cappuccino that proved to be only half-full when I raised it for the first sip 5 minutes after leaving the drive-thru. Traffic was horrible. My husband called for the report but couldn’t hear me because my Bluetooth wasn’t situated properly and I fussed at him for fussing at me. It was ugly. I did not want to be this way. I tried to stop complaining. I was now irritated that my daughter had left her driver’s license at home so could not drive even part of the way (not even caring that after the yanking of her shoulder she was sore and didn’t need to be driving!).

During the 30 minute halt on the expressway while troopers cleared up debris fallen out of the truck of a student moving home, I plugged myself in to this song.
Here is what I heard and prayed, “By thine own eternal Spirit” (not by my hard work or grunting and groaning), “rule in all our hearts alone” (win this war against my fierce sin nature; defeat my will to have things go my way). “By thine all-sufficient merit”: thank you, Jesus, that no matter how badly I screw up this day with my complaining heart, it is your merit I trust in to deliver me, and your merit is all-sufficient.

Thank God, I don’t have to do one thing more. And indeed, not only will he raise me to His glorious throne (He did, by bringing repentance for my moronic behavior), but even more amazingly, He will bring His kingdom near in me and through me. Indeed, let us wait for the Lord with eagerness, crying out, “Come thou long-expected Jesus.” Listen and look. The child-king is coming.

For today and tomorrow I’m pulling out a reflection from last year that I needed to read all over again:

Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel’s Strength and Consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear Desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Born Thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.
By Thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all sufficient merit,
Raise us to Thy glorious throne.

“Come thou long-expected Jesus.” Indeed. Come, Lord Jesus come! Right about now, doesn’t this one line alone capture where your heart is? Christmas details causing chaos? Come, thou long-expected Jesus. Family togetherness raising tension? Come, thou long-expected Jesus. Economic forecast raining on your planned parade? Come, thou long-expected Jesus.

The season of Advent, depending on your calendar, is fast coming to a close. The word itself comes from two Latin roots ad meaning “toward” and ven meaning “come.” We are celebrating God’s coming toward us in Christ. We are celebrating the intersection of heaven and earth. The Charles Wesley-authored hymn, which I first fell in love with listening to Indelible Grace’s rendition Indelible Grace’s version, takes us through the full meaning of that coming.

Perhaps you are like me, a little shy and apprehensive about those command performance seasonal parties. Perhaps you are like me, and somehow the days leading up to Christmas seem to draw to the surface not the best of humanity but the very worst of your sin nature. Perhaps you, like me, as you look toward the New Year, have tremendous hopes mixed with huge fears. If so, you, like me, need to move past the one-line prayer to the rest of the sentence: “Born to set thy people free. From our sins and fears release us; let us find our rest in thee.” Any and all of these sentences have become a ready one-line prayer as I step into situations that without Christ teem with possibility for sin, fear, and restlessness. The good news is that I really can step out of the craziness, sit near a fire and take a long draw from the homemade hot chocolate and ask Jesus to “let me find my rest in him.”

Our capacity for rest is of course related to our source of strength. Where do you find your strength? Where do you find your consolation? The next line of the first stanza always stuns me into recognition of how rarely I find it in the Christ whose coming we celebrate: “Israel’s Strength and Consolation.” Most often, I look inward to draw strength and I look outward to draw consolation. How I need to know my Strength is in Jesus and the Joy of every longing heart is my consolation. In these words we find a simple centering prayer for Advent: “Jesus, may you be my Desire, my Hope, my Joy, my Strength, and my Consolation.” …continued tomorrow