Tag: New

The Creator of Light

Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above. These gifts come down from the Father, the creator of the heavenly lights, in whose character there is no change at all. 18 He chose to give us birth by his true word, and here is the result: we are like the first crop from the harvest of everything he created.

James 1:17-18 (NRSVue)

It has been awhile since I updated this blog because I had lost access to log into it. Today, however, I was able to get back in, so here comes another blog post from your occasionally intrepid pastor.

God has given birth to us. Isn’t that an odd thing to think about? Didn’t our mothers give birth to us? The answer is yes, but God has given birth to us again.

When we were first born, whether it was in a hospital, a house, or somewhere else entirely, the first thing we likely saw upon birth with our tiny infant eyes was light. We were, by the process of birth, transferred from darkness into light. We transitioned from seeing nothing to being able to see everything. Though we were too young and too new to the world to be able to process and understand anything we were seeing, we saw light being reflected by objects and we saw the shapes and the textures of the world, and it was light that made such perception possible. It is God who has given us the good gift of life and sight. God, who created the heavenly lights, gives us life again in the new birth.

In the new birth, God the Creator transitions us once again from darkness into light. Before, we were lost. Now, we are found. We were blind, but now we see. It is the life of joy and peace that we sing about in the well-known hymn I am now referencing. God has birthed us into this new life.

Because this new life is new, we might not perceive everything the way we should when we first experience the new birth. We see the light, and the things upon which that light is now shed that we could not see before, but in the beginning we often only see the shapes and the textures, not really understanding this new view God has given us of the world. As we continue to grow in grace, God the Creator of lights illumines more and more of our world, so that we gradually come to see the world from the perspective God had intended for us all along.

May you continue to grow in the love and grace of the God of light, so that God’s light may shine into the darkness through you.

AMEN

New Creation

17 For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
20 No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—
and their descendants as well.
24 Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the LORD.

Isaiah 65:17-25

It might interest you to know that while writing this blog post I had a strange thing happen with my computer and I lost the entire post before I could publish it. So, let’s try this again!

We are drawing near to the beginning of the season of Advent, which is supposed to be a time of anticipation, expectation, and waiting. The question is: What exactly are we anticipating? What exactly are we expecting? What is it exactly that we are waiting for?

The first obvious answer is that we are waiting for the coming of the Messiah with great anticipation and expectation. That is the central hope of Advent. The coming Christ will save us from sin and death and afford us the great hope of resurrection and life everlasting.

The second answer which we may not always think about is what Isaiah is talking about here. The coming Messiah will not just save us from our sins, but will usher the inbreaking of the kingdom of God into the world. It marks the beginning of God initiating a new act of creation. Isaiah refers to things that people experience in life, things that bring pain and suffering, and turns them completely upside down. This is what God is doing in this new creation: Turning this broken world upside down, rebuilding what has been destroyed, and recreating in us God’s image in which we were first created. Isaiah describes what this new creation will look like and how it will operate, which is completely the opposite of what we know.

So, not only are we waiting expectantly with great anticipation for the coming Christ, but we are also waiting, expecting, and anticipating with joy the new thing God is doing.

May we seek to be a part of that new creation not only during Advent, but every day that God has given us.