Notes of Faith December 12, 2023
The Jesus I Need
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
That given the events of the past years, Advent feels just a tiny bit misplaced?
Global pandemic.
Economic instability.
Racial tension.
Unending violence.
The call to quiet myself and once more prepare for the coming of Jesus feels like something better suited for a time of greater peace. What I need right now is to not wait on the Lord but experience the Lord. Like, yesterday.
You know what I mean?
And it’s not exactly the Jesus in a manger whom I really need, if I’m being honest. It’s the Jesus who walks on water and flips over tables and brings the dead back to life who I want rushing onto the scene. And yet, Advent calls me to wait and prepare and keep watch for a Savior who will enter the world in as fragile a state as possible: an infant entrusted to a poor and powerless couple.
Remind me again how this is Good News?
As is most always the case, to understand the story of Jesus we must first understand the story of the Bible. Ages before the birth of Jesus, the Prophet Isaiah told us exactly who this powerless infant would one day become.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. — Isaiah 9:6
This is who Jesus will become, Isaiah says. But this is not who Jesus is at the beginning. He begins… as we all do… at the beginning. And even though that’s often not the Jesus we want, I think it might be the Jesus I need.
Because I don’t know about you, but it helps me tremendously to know that Jesus will not only come to have the world rest upon His shoulders but that He is brave enough to allow the world to bear down upon Him. Put another way:
Yes, the world is terrifying, but the Good News is that God is not afraid.
How do I know that? Because Jesus could have arrived fully formed as the Mighty God and Prince of Peace. He is God and God can do whatever God wants to do. But God chose to come to us as a vulnerable child, which is just another way of saying He did what none of us would ever do. He let down every defense, ceded all strength, and offered Himself to the entire world.
Why? There are many good answers that could be given, but at least one of them must be that God wanted us to know that even though the world can be terrifying, God is not terrified, and thus we can choose to not be either.
Seen in this light, I am drawn more peacefully into the waiting season of Advent, eager to lean in close and gaze upon this Child who will save the world and trust that even though the story has yet to play itself out, the mere presence of the Baby lets me know that all, in the end, shall be well.
Written for Devotionals Daily by Ryan Casey Waller, author of Depression, Anxiety, and Other Things We Don’t Want to Talk About.
God/Jesus, lived our human life, that He might serve as a holy and perfect sacrifice for the sin of man.
Heb 4:15-16
15 For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
2 Cor 5:21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus had to live our entire life experience to represent the relationship between humanity and God. His perfect holiness and our lack thereof, made it necessary through God’s love, to send Jesus to be the only sacrifice that would reconcile mankind to God. What a Savior and Lord we have! May we all continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and pray that we might also grow in spiritual maturity to be more like Him every day!
Pastor Dale