Grace & Truth: A Reign of Gritty Love
Pastor Steve Poole
TEXT: Luke 2:22-35
TRUTH #1: King Jesus is God’s salvation
- Luke 2:29-32 & Exodus 13:2, 12-14
- Luke 2:30 –“For my eyes have seen your salvation…”
- Galatians 4:4-5
TRUTH #2: King Jesus embodied gritty, sacrificial love
- Hosea 13:10-14
- 1 Corinthians 15:51-56
NEXT STEPS
- Believe in King Jesus for salvation
- Reread the “Christmas story” from Luke and Matthew looking for God’s gritty love.
- Do a “gritty love” thing for someone this week.
- Slow down this week so you don’t miss Jesus
ADVENT REFLECTION
(This is an excerpt from The Anticipated Christ by Brian Zahnd)
In our high-tech, high-speed, high-stress age, we’re not very good at waiting—it feels too much like doing nothing. But it’s not doing nothing. As we wait, we slowly become contemplative enough to discern what God is doing. Unless we intentionally cultivate some contemplative slowness in our soul, it doesn’t matter if God acts, because we will most likely miss it. When God entered history definitively in Christ, a lot of people who should have perceived it and rejoiced, missed what God was doing or even resisted it. Quiet contemplatives like Simeon and Anna perceived the arrival of God’s salvation because they had learned how to wait.
The deeper truth is that God is always acting, because God is always loving his creation. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always inviting us into their house of love. But when we are consumed by anger, harried by anxiety, and driven by impatience, we are blind and deaf to what God is actually doing in the present moment. God is always about to act in our life and in our world, but if we want to discern the actions of God we must learn to first wait in quiet contemplation. Advent is a season to keep watch and ponder the stars like the ancient magi, to keep vigil in the fields like the shepherds of Bethlehem. God is always about to act and God is always acting. The question is, can we perceive it? Another poem in Isaiah sums it up well:
Behold, I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth.
Do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
~ Isaiah 43:19
O God, you are always about to act and bring about a new thing; help us to wait patiently, that we might perceive and welcome what you bring to pass. Amen.
