Read Micah 4:1-5.
The season of Advent urges us think about what it could look, feel, taste, smell, and be like when the fullness of what God intends for the world intersects the world in which our own intentions, biases, fears, short-sightedness are the rule of law. What will that reality to come be like and how can we move closer to that reality through our words and actions now?
Complete this sentence: The fullness of God’s reign will be most different than our present reality…
To consider the question above, we have to stretch ourselves beyond what we can see and touch in the present and enter into the holy practice of wonder. Advent invites us to wonder, like the author of Micah, about a world so very different than the one we find ourselves in now. Micah imagined a world that he did not live in, a world in which a separated people would have a place to come together, a world in which human beings worked toward peace and not war, and a world where fear did not motivate action.
Micah’s imagination was spurred by the pressure points of anxiety, injustice, and hopelessness that he felt and, through the recognition of these pressure points, he imagined how God’s reign could usher in a drastically new way of being.
(You are now invited to consider the pressure points of the context in which you dwell and then do the holy work of considering how God’s reign may usher in a new way of thinking and being based on these pressure points. )
Pressure Point:
New Reality of God’s Reign:
Pray: God of wonder, in this holy season of Advent, help us to be aware of the pressure points of injustice, fear, and hopelessness in the places we dwell and to, with the power of the Holy Spirit, both imagine and work toward the reality of peace, love, and unity that you offer to us in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Andy Morgan, UKirk UTK
Words for Waiting 