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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 toˁto "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 confes-
sion 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