Let's review the Bible Study together online (p. 72-73). I offer my reflections below, and invite you to comment on any of my reflections, or share your own via the commenting function at the end.
1) Job 38: 4 - 7
What words would you describe the power and beauty of God?
Immense; wonder; awe-some; glorious; calming; connecting, unifying.
I really like that verse "the morning stars sang together." It just resonates with me as an accurate description of what happens when God is present. Things that don't even seem on our radar appear in miraculous and edifying ways (I mean, who ever think of stars in the morning, anyway?) . What keeps coming to me when I think about how I describe the power and beauty of God is how God brings the disparate together, how God calms the fierce storm, relieves the opposing forces, makes peace where there is strife, unifies the good efforts and disempowers evil ones. God brings the morning stars together in song ... brings together (not just together, but together in song!) things that we don't even know are apart ... as well as things (and people) that we believe impossibly, irrevocably separated. And then ... they sing!
2) Luke 2: 13 - 14
How would you react to this heavenly chorus? Would you tell others what you've heard this night? How would you do this?
Awestruck.
I would cry, laugh, smile, scream.
I would work to share what I experience through everything I did. I feel like I work to do this every day of my life ... and certainly I do this more successfully some days, some hours, some years, than others. I work to preach and live the Gospel; I can't do anything else with my life, I guess.
3) John 1: 1-14
Where or how is Jesus coming to you this Advent?
v. 4-5, "Life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." This is what resonated most with me as I was looking over the passage. You might be able to tell this in my prayers this season; I am really connecting to Jesus as the light in our all-too-dark world. I have always connected to this imagery. In part, I guess, because there is so much darkness and often things seem very dim to many people, but also because I know that when I am praying and walking as closely as I can with Jesus, that I do see and feel the world as a light-er place. A place that has light, a place with hope, a place with possibility ...
4) Luke 10: 38-42
What tasks and worries distract you from Jesus? When do you sit at his feet? This Advent, how will you focus on what God has done, is doing and will do?
I jotted three things down when I was thinking about these questions:
- taking and making more time just to be with my children.
- letting Jesus in and through all of me, and letting the anxiety of the season out
- allowing the Holy Spirit to work through me and not vice verse
5) Revelation 5: 8-14. (What? Revelation??? LOL.)
How does this vision give you hope? How will you sing or share God's song in your life?
This reading and vision gives me hope because of the unified voice of praise that I read and hear in these verses. The agreement among the disparate and somewhat shocking images and beings present in these verses offer me hope. God's kin-dom (whenever and wherever) is here depicted (in part) as a place without discord, and that gives me so much hope in an age in which there is significant, constant and increasing inter-cultural, geographic, socio-economic, and yes, inter-religious strife, discord and pain. To know that God's kingdom is a place of harmony gives me hope, yes, hope!
So, now to you! I've offered my reflections above, and I invite you to comment, challenge, question, on any of my reflections, or share your own via the commenting function at the end.
~ Pastor Melinda
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