In
which the exiles come home
Genesis 1:1,
2
When
God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste
and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said,
“Let there be light.”
Lamentations
3:22-24
The
LORD’s kindness has not ended, for His mercies are not exhausted. They are
renewed every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. “My portion is the LORD,” I
said. therefore I yet hope for Him.
Twenty-eight
days is the longest possible duration of Advent, the start of which falls
between 27 November and 3 December. In 2021, there are twenty-seven days of
Advent, but no twenty-eighth. This, then, is a bonus reflection.
In
sitting with the text of Genesis 1-11 as a theological resource for the
return from exile and restoration of Jerusalem, I have sought to hold Advent
not so much as a preparation for the celebration of the first coming of Jesus,
but, rather, as the anticipation of and preparation for his coming again, in
power and great glory. Where is this Jesus in these texts, and in these
meditations? Where Jesus always is, in the pages of the Old Testament: hidden,
present by faith not sight.
As
we find ourselves in days of painful constraint and great upheaval, may our
Advent longing be sustained by God’s grace, until it be fulfilled in God’s
mercy.
Biblical
texts: Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary
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