The Son of Man’s Advent to Seek and Save the Lost and Broken

Tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent and today was the first day of a devotional that Corinne and I are reading.  It’s written by John Piper and its entitled “The Dawning of Indestructible Joy – Daily Readings for Advent”.  The theme of the devotional is the fullness of Christ as described in John 1:14-16, The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth…… Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.  Other translations use the wording grace upon grace to describe what we’ve received from his coming.  Grace itself is unmerited favor. We have received, through Christ’s coming, his advent, unmerited favor upon unmerited favor.  That’s something that ought to supply joy in these dark days.

Today’s reading from Luke 19:10 speaks to the purpose in Christ’s coming, The son of man came to seek and to save the lost.  Advent means coming, so at Christmas we celebrate his coming to seek and to save the lost, those who can be saved because they know they’re lost.  A number of years ago a group of church members, guided by my wife, Corinne, collectively created the mosaic shown below of the prodigal son returning to his father.  Other than the boarder, the mosaic is made from broken ceramic pottery and dishes.  So as you view this work of art, the brokenness that we understand from the story comes through as strikingly visual, and we see ourselves in the broken and dejected image of the son who’s returning to his father.

For us to receive grace upon grace, it helps to begin with the reality that we need it, and desperately.  Lord, help me to see advent through the eyes of the broken person that I am.

Running Into the Fortified Tower

The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.  The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale. Proverbs 18:10-11

While in Ireland in 2014 our family saw and walked through several fortified houses or strong houses.  The one pictured here has a fortified tower in one corner of the building.  The fortified tower looks to be the safest place to be if this building was attacked.  Those fortified towers were needed during times of attack to preserve the local community and its people. 

God's Wisdom for Navigating Life by Tim and Kathy Keller, includes a beautiful entry for April 26, that reveals the truth of a healthy response to our need for security.  We all have a place of ultimate security, some fortification of some sort that we run to for our protection.  The wealthy imagine that their financial security will be that fortified tower.  To those who have been put right with God through God's great mercy (the righteous), God's name is to become the fortified tower that they run to.  Keller further explains that God's name in the Bible is a way of speaking God's nature and attributes.  Thus, to run into God's name is to rehearse and tell yourself about who God is, and what his nature and character is all about.  When we panic during times of crisis or stress and try to find some other "fortified tower" to run to, we are failing to run into his power, his wisdom, his love for us.  

Going one step further, we learn of the nature and attributes of God by worshiping him, by studying the Bible, and by testifying to one another of his character and goodness.  We do all this so that when the trials of life come our way, as we know they will, we can run into God's attributes and find our security in him. 

Submitting My Will to God's Will Concerning My Condition, and Receiving a Blessing

Yesterday I participated in a 5K event that I've done for several years for the Ugandan Water Project ( http://ugandanwaterproject.com/  ).  But, for at least two reasons, when I signed up for the event, I realized that I could not participate as I wanted to participate.  I am being treated for prostate cancer, and its been 5 weeks since having brachytherapy (radioactive seed implants) surgery, and the side effects of my treatments are peaking and wearing me out.  On top of that, the entire month of April to date has been miserable for doing any outdoor training.  My obvious desire was to be well and to participate in the event as a runner and compete for a top three spot in my age (60 - 65) group.  My focus was all about wishing I could be better so I could participate in the way I desired to participate.  On top of this I was able to get my company, Bergmann, to be a sponsor of this event, and two of my colleagues showed up. 


Within this backdrop, I have been reading Jeremiah Burroughs' The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment ( http://www.chapellibrary.org/files/1113/7658/4062/rjoc.pdf ) to help me learn contentment during this time of personal suffering, when I am not in the condition I wish to be in.  One of the hard learned lessons for me has been achieving a grateful heart that's content with having my will and desires be blended with God's will and desires. Burroughs explains that such a thing is mystery to the carnal heart.  One breaks through the mystery by having one's desires satisfied not by obtaining the thing or condition that's originally desired, but instead he makes his will to be at one with God's will.


Thus I determined that I would enter as a walker, begin walking the event, and then continue it as a training run if I felt up to it.  As I got ready for the race, God connected me to an energetic and fit man named Mike, age 72, who was wearing a neck brace and sporting walking poles.  He explained to me that he had run this event in the past but that he had recently fallen during a training run, and would need to walk the event this year.  As we walked together to the starting line, I explained to him my medical situation, and when we reached the starting line he placed his hands on my shoulders and prayed a powerful prayer for my healing. I then prayed for his complete healing from his fall.  He told me that my radiation treatments were God's gift to me for my healing, and need to be embraced.  He then went on to explain that he had received radiation treatments for testicular cancer many years ago, which he remembered wore him down for a while too.  He also explained that he recovered and fathered a child after those treatments concluded.  Even these words provided hope to me that our son Tim may someday father a child after having chemotherapy treatments for, you guessed it, testicular cancer.  So after walking the first 0.8 miles to the top of a hill, I took off at a typical training pace for me and finished the 2.3 miles running.  I spent some time enjoying the post-event foods and chatting with my Bergmann colleagues.  I returned home with a joyful heart.


So when suffering, instead of wishing I was not suffering so, if I instead work through the mystery of abandoning the end I desire, but look to be satisfied to make my will God's will, I will actually receive the blessing that God intends for me.  The blessing I received during yesterday's event was better for me than anything I received out of the past events, because it's what God wanted for me.

The Business of Our God Is Redemption

I read an amazing article ( https://world.wng.org/2018/04/through_fire_to_forgiveness ) in the 4/28/18 issue of World Magazine that took me back to my high school days.  The Vietnam War was a daily tragedy that we lived through as we watched the evening news.  But the image of a naked little girl fleeing her village that was being napalm bombed by the US military in one picture captured the horror of that war.  The photojournalist won a Pulitzer Prize for their work.  June Cheng's World Magazine article chronicles this little girl's life after the photo, and is a must read.   In short, God saved this little girl so that He could eventually redeem her.  He saved her from a brutal attack, and eventually she came to faith in Christ and now lives in Canada.  Think of some horrible situation that faces you or a loved one, and imagine that there's a heavenly Father, a savior, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who as a 3 in 1 God who is in the business of taking the worst of situations and human conditions and doing a work of restoration that seems beyond miraculous.  Yet, if we could comprehend the the many acts of this God we would have faith to believe that he does works such as these daily in lives and hearts that are open to Him.