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First week of Advent
Revelation 22:1-7
Psalm 95: 1-7
Luke 21:34-36
Summary
In Revelations, his angel proclaims: "Behold, I am coming soon".
The psalmist cries: "Come, Lord Jesus!". Luke warns us not to let
our hearts become "drowsy", from" carousing and drunkenness
and the anxieties of daily life".
Reflection
Lord, I know that I am not free to stand before You.... not yet. I
am too busy. Sound familiar? Most of us and I, myself, have to
be pushed pretty hard to—to "stand still", let along stand before
You.
It's not just busyness that keeps me on the run, avoiding standing
before my Lord. It's something deeper. It's hard work.
Augustine called this hard work "confession". For him, this con-
fession is two-fold. It is an honest, probing assessment of the self.
It is then a statement of faith, praise, and thanksgiving for the grace
to do so.
This probing self-assessment is an on-going searching of my heart:
my motivations, fears, hates, shame...all of it, and more. It is an
act which we must do constantly. Even
though we acknowledge the worth of
the sentiment "an unexamined life is not
worth living", we don't really buy it.
This "examination" is not simply of the
self, an inward gazing, but of our rela-