November 29, 2022 - Advent Devotion
The King Shall Come
The King shall come
When morning dawns
And light triumphant breaks
When beauty gilds the eastern hills
And life to joy awakes
“For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers ...”
Do you like sitting in traffic this time of year? Do you like the lines in the stores? Do you like the way you have to kind of make your way bumping into others, squeezing past one another?
What if instead of getting frustrated in this way, we celebrated the closeness of the season? Even as God's people, we can easily get frustrated with getting so close to so many so much of the time. We like our space.
Christmas is God's gift of being with God's people, bringing close to us tidings of comfort and joy. Advent is the season of trusting the promise that God will one day come even closer to us, when Christ comes again.
What a gift to know and to trust what Paul tells us in Romans, in The Christ, "Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers." What a promise to know as our song tells us, "The King shall come, and when he does, he will be even closer to us, as close as the morning is to the dawn, as close as first light is to daybreak, as close as the beauty of the morning sun on the eastern hills, as close as real joy is when life in Christ awakes!"
Let us pray: God who is so close, today I confess I like my space. Sometimes I use it to escape, or to get by, or to breathe, or to worry about myself, or to distance myself from others; sometimes I use my space to even distance myself from you, and I am sorry. Come close to me, crowd me, brush against me, touch me with comfort and joy. Bring salvation nearer and nearer to me, I pray. Amen.
