Advent

They wait for Him in the leper colonies. Waiting for Him to touch their snowy white skin and make it whole again. They have been outcasts for so long, knowing only the word “Unclean!” to describe them. With healing, they can be loved again. Oh to be loved.

They wait for Him as AID’s takes away the life of their youth. They ask Him for a mom and dad, just to be a part of a family before death carries them into the unknown… Just like it’s already carried away their mother’s and father’s. Their cries fill the small, overcrowded rooms of the orphanages. Slowly they see their playmates, their siblings, those well, taken first. No one is coming for them. They beg Him to let them be included. Oh for a family.

They wait for Him in prison cells across the world. Memories overcome their weary minds as they fight to cling to truth. The scars covering their backs will never heal here on earth. They will never forget the moment they were ripped away from the churches they had vowed to give their very lives for. They will never forget seeing the tears on their babies faces when the soldiers came. They ask Him for release. They beg Him to open the prison doors wide. Oh for freedom.

They wait for Him in the small towns. Waiting for Him to come put together the brokenness that has become a normal they can’t ever seem to shake. They wait for Him to put together the marriages; destroyed by lust, addictions, pleasures that never seem to be satisfied. In their little hearts they wish for the pills to be thrown away, the bottles destroyed.  Beside small beds they ask for their daddy to love Jesus and to come home again. He hasn’t come home for Christmas in a long time. Oh for a Daddy.

They wait for Him in the Red Light districts and dirty brothels. Numb to any beauty of life, it seems impossible imagining anything outside of this place. But in the darkness, as their last customer for the night has finally left, they find their hearts crying out for something. Anything more than this living hell.

They plead for a Rescuer. Oh for a Redeemer.

They wait for Him on the bench inside the large, beautiful stain-glassed sanctuary. Put together on the outside, yet their insides have been dying for so long now. Change seems impossible, pretending now a part of who they have become. Secret sins shredding them apart, overwhelmed by lies, they have become complacent and apathetic. They ask Him to for life. To feel something again. If only just for one time. They begin to cry out for a Healer. Someone to make the dry bones come to life. Oh for life.

Hopeless in themselves. The leper without access to any medicine even able to touch such a disease, the child unable to write their own adoption papers, the prostitute without money or power to buy her own freedom, daddy doesn’t even want to come home yet….

But then the darkness begins to shatter, as the King steps back into the world.

We would have given up long ago, but in His kingdom, their stories haven’t ended yet.

They are just beginning.

He makes ALL things new. Feel the weight and beauty and hope of those words.

ALL THINGS.

Someone told the leper about the One who washes all people clean by His blood. Who makes the unclean, “Clean!” The man now laughs as he listens to the stories of Peter, Paul, Moses...the leper who came back and thanked Jesus for healing him too. Surrounded by a community, fully accepted before the King of Kings.

Every night before bed, a sister at the orphanage told the children about a Daddy who had written adoption papers for each of them. A Daddy who wanted them all, sick or well. A Daddy who had come to bring them into His family forever, a Daddy who would love and protect them and never leave them. The little boy believed in this Daddy, and when he grew up, he came back to the orphanage with his wife and they signed adoption papers to bring 3 babies home. He sits at the table next to his wife and their 3 children, all healed from AID’s here. I see them smiling and talking to Jesus.

Someone went to that small house and started doing life with that family.  More people were raised up to pray over those children and to join them in asking for their daddy to love Jesus and come home. They sit at the table, eating their fill from the best china dishes they’ve ever seen. For the first time in years, they’re getting to eat together as a family. Finally a meal void of conflict, anger, alcohol, drugs, or fear of anyone leaving. I see Jesus wipe their last tear away. They're ALL here.

Someone came to the brothel and rescued the women. Someone opened up their home and took the hardened girl inside. They gave her a safe place to sleep and told her about the Greatest Healer ever to come. She didn’t understand it for a long time, she broke many hearts trying to figure this whole thing out. But now she’s here. She’s been touched by the very hand of Jesus… a hand that will never defile her, never degrade her or use her, a hand that will never sell her for money. She listens intently as Rahab tells her story. You see them taking a long walk together with Jesus.

Everyone is made well here. Everyone is made new and clean. The stories never stop coming forth.

Their endings beautiful and they find themselves in perfect worship at the foot of the throne of the King of Kings.

They understand perfectly that it was the King alone who saved them. No one else had the power on earth to set them free. And for some reason or another, He chose to send many “someone’s” along the way to reveal Himself to them.

Together, hand in hand, they rejoice.

Today, I rejoice in the First Advent. That the Savior, God Himself, has come.

And I rejoice in the hope for the Second Advent. For the return of the King.

When He will make ALL things new.

Jesus Only

Picture silence. What do you see?

Nothing. Darkness. The absence of sound. Stillness. A period of time without speech or noise.

400 years of silence. 400 years without a voice from the Lord calling out to His people. 400 years of waiting for the promise of a Messiah to come to fulfillment. And the Lord’s people waited, wanting, desiring, longing, hoping, wondering.

And as a baby’s cry pierced the cold night air, the darkness would be shattered in a million places forever. It would go to China, to Australia, Rome, Greece, South America, India, Japan, Mexico, Chicago, Eureka... The light was now shining in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.

A messenger was sent to prepare the way for this Messiah. Before the foundations of the world were laid, it was determined that John the Baptist would lead and prepare the way for the light. And he did. “John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mark 1:4)

And when John had accomplished the purpose to which he had been sent, “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

And all through the gospels you see this incredible story falling into place, perfectly fulfilling all of the prophecies that had spoken of its coming. You see the Great Rescuer coming and interacting with people. For the first time, you see God Himself come to dwell with, walk with, laugh with, do life with….sinful men.

Men who, despite their massive failures, would become so radically transformed by seeing the greatest glory of Jesus and believing in this gospel. Men, who would stake their very lives on its truth, would turn the world upside down, and whose sweat and blood would pave the way for people like me and you to hear about and believe in the gospel.

Men who had walked with Jesus.

In Mark 9, we find three of these men on a mountain top with Jesus (Peter, James, and John), and their first hand encounter with the glory of God coming down and being revealed. (Check out Mark 9:1-13)

Jesus has just finished telling them that he has come to suffer and to die, and then he leads 3 of his closest disciples on top of a mountain with him. Here they get a phenomenal, epic “mountain top” experience that completely blew them away.

And while I’ve been meditating on their encounter on the mountain, my mind has been going the most to the verse following.

(Mark 9:8) “And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.”

I love the mountain top experiences of walking with the Lord. When the glory appears so bright, when you are blown away by the Lord, when the Word speaks so clearly and loudly, and when it “seems easy” to be led into worship. When Jesus feels close, spending time with Him such a joy, prayers are being answered, our hearts refreshed, we love our church….the list goes on.

But, regardless of what some might say, life is not lived on the mountain top. Life is not lived in a constant, spiritual high. It’s living in the day to day faithfulness on the road. Some people may be blessed with more mountain top seasons, but eventually all of us are asked to live out our faithfulness in the routine of doing life. And if you’re like me, when you stay there awhile, you can often begin to doubt what the Lord is really up to. You long for the spiritual high, but it’s not coming. It can feel tiring, dry, even hard. Or maybe you have a short season on the mountain, but coming down hits you like cold water in the face as temptation and life quickly set in.

As I am writing this, I am thinking of a new friend I have made up here in Chicago. A new friend who faithfully attends church and small group week after week…alone.

A friend who faithfully keeps praying every day for her husband and children and grandbabies to come to know Jesus.

A friend who has taught me some things these past few months.

Recently we were given the task of setting up a Christmas tree for a church party, and she taught me how to make a Christmas tree stand out of rocks and old buckets and sand. Things you find in back alleys and in church basements.

She’s challenged me in my love for God’s Word. Her Bible is so marked up and highlighted, that it’s falling apart. She loves meeting with Jesus in her mornings.

She tells me she can’t read very well and never wants to read out-loud because she never completed an education past the 7^th grade when she dropped out to have her first baby. But she doesn’t let that stop her from digging into the Word.

She always tells me she’s blessed, even when she says it with tears in her eyes because of how hard her week has been.

She never misses church, even when I find her sitting alone in the back.

I don’t know how many of her weeks, how many seasons she has gotten on the mountain with the Lord, but I can write this with so much confidence that in her darkest days and greatest struggles, this verse is her hope.

Jesus is with her.

She may no longer see anyone with her, BUT JESUS ONLY.

And it’s enough for her to keep walking faithfully day in and day out.

My promise verse of 2011 has been Psalm 139:5, “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.”

I look behind and you’re there, then up ahead and you’re there too.

Jesus has been all over 2011, whether we have spent much or very little on the mountaintop. This is to bring much hope to the believer that even if we look around and it feels no one else is still walking with us, Jesus is.

Will He be enough for you this next year? Will you be alright if you look around and it’s Jesus only?
Will you still praise Him if you doesn’t allow you to experience the mountaintop for a long time, but calls you to the road?

Will you acknowledge that Jesus has been there, behind you in these last 12 months, and He’s already there up ahead in 2012?

Jesus only. May that promise be more than enough for us all.