ADVENT - DAY 8 - A WAY PREPARED

ANTICIPATING GOD IN THE CHRISTMAS SEASON (A Daily Advent Devotional)

Over the next few days till Christmas I would like you to take a journey with me in anticipation.  Let's daily look at the events leading up to the birth of Christ with a sense of anticipation of His arrival into this world and into our lives.  (Inspired by the Book "The Miraculous Journey" by Marty A. Bullis).

Advent - Day 8 - A WAY PREPARED

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” (Mark 1:1-3 ESV)

Mark is a different advent account than Matthew's - it's not the usual story that is told during the advent season.  Unlike Matthew and Luke's account - Mark bypasses Jesus' birth and childhood in order to get immediately to the adult life and ministry of Jesus: bringing salvation to a dead world.

There is a sense of urgency that we find in Mark's writings that we don't find in the other gospels - a sense that Christ is active and moving quickly in our world.  Jesus is presented full of power and the Spirit of God.

John the Baptizer tells us that the Christ who will come is "more powerful than I."  As we will see in Luke's advent story next week, John's parents - Elizabeth and Zechariah had been promised by an angel of God that their child would have the spirit and power of Elijah, one of Israel's most powerful prophets.  What a different introduction to the life of Jesus.

We are forced by this advent story to leap forward past 30 years of Jesus' growing up years, past the swaddling clothes of a manger, forced to see the incarnation as preparation for a future advent - the advent of the Gospel in a world emptied of good news.

We have the barest hint of the incarnation story as we listen to God calling "You are my Son, the Beloved."  Our imagination springs on the word "son," and we wonder how a blood relative of God came to be in our world.  The immediacy of the account leaves us wanting to race forward through Christ's life, but the account also makes us want to review history.  When we read the words "the time is fulfilled for the coming of the Kingdom, we want to run into the past.  We are full of questions.

How did the time get fulfilled?  Where was this Christ before He walked to the Jordan?  Why wasn't it in the papers?  Why didn't we hear about it? We are caught between the past and the future - anticipation and imaginative memory.  Mark's account  leaves us surprised, leaves our mind racing backward and forward.