First Friday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Love and Faithfulness Collide
by Jared Siebert
In today’s reading from Psalm 85:10-13, the poet describes the divine forces of love, faithfulness, righteousness, and peace all reaching out for one another from every which way, meeting in a surprising collision that results in the healing of the land and paves the way for the arrival of the Messiah.
We begin our poetic contemplation where the love of God and the faithfulness of God meet. The meeting brings out new dimensions and depths. The love of God is deepened when it is nested in God’s faithfulness to God’s people. God’s faithfulness goes way beyond simple tolerance or endurance when we see it as fueled by love. God wants to be faithful. God wants to be connected to us. God’s faithfulness is rooted in God’s love for us. God’s love is not temporary or a fleeting emotion; it is deeply rooted in a long history of faithfulness. This invites reciprocity from God’s people. A pattern to follow. As God’s people, we can respond in kind. We can express our love of God through our own long and deliberate faithfulness. Our love is deepened by our faithfulness. Our faithfulness is deepened by our love.
Next, the poet moves on to the imagery of the contrasting forces of righteousness and peace finally finding one another and engaging in a tender kiss. Righteousness is the divine standard of justice and moral integrity. Righteousness is what leads to holiness, wholeness, and wholesomeness. Peace, in turn, is a deep and needed settledness, balance, and calm. In the tender kiss, they are both transformed and deepened. In the sloppy wet kiss, we see that true peace can never truly form in the absence of righteousness. A healed world, a peaceful world, is a just and moral world. It is a world made right.
False peace papers over injustice. Real peace is married to justice. Righteousness is made holy, whole, and wholesome when peace is the lasting result. Righteousness that is not headed straight for peace, settledness, balance, and calm can often be a prelude to violence and destruction and unrighteousness. When righteousness is in a committed and intimate relationship with peace it guarantees a good future. It can be trusted. It can be submitted to. The process it entails can be followed. They complete each other. They fulfill each other.
These goods in the world are depicted as forces of nature. Coming down from heaven and springing up from the earth. We depend on them. We can expect them. We can count on them. But we cannot control them. They are beyond us. Faithfulness, like a growing crop, emerges from the ground, while righteousness, like rain and snow, watches and then falls from the sky. The strength and beauty of God’s redemptive plan literally come at us from every direction. From high above and from deep beneath us.
God’s plan for the world operates without our intervention and brings good to us and to the world unprompted. We get caught up in it. Swept away in it. Wholly and totally blanketed and supported by it. We can work with it. But we never direct it. And because we are not its owner it works on us rather than the reverse. By working with God’s plan we are healed and restored. God’s plan brings a harvest of good things. A cupboard full of needed and nourishing things.
And finally, God’s plan yields a final and unexpected thing. These forces of good, this wholesome and helpful plan literally pave the way for a beautiful surprise: Jesus.
Over this past year, I have been reimaging my life. I have embarked on new paths, found new work, and I lead a still-forming community of Jesus-followers here in Saskatoon. I have felt the forces of good swirling around me. They have met and kissed and collided in unexpected ways in unexpected places. I am caught up in something much larger than myself. This hasn’t always felt safe but it has always felt good. Not everything is within my grasp and control. But I am grateful to know that the churn and swirl is nested deeply in love, faithfulness, righteousness, and peace. I take great pleasure in watching it spring up from the ground and having it look down on me from the sky. This Advent I can already feel the road ahead smoothing out and I know the best is still yet to come.
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