16 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
16 lines
2.6 KiB
Plaintext
<p class="text">SMcK: I don’t know about you, but these are timely words for me.</p>
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<p class="text">Advent in Contested Territory: God with us</p>
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<p class="text">By <a href="https://heatherhartwrites.com/" target="_blank" class="">Heather L. Hart</a></p>
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<p class="text">Only distance could save us.</p>
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<p class="text">A tiny, nonliving entity, with the power to kill, invaded bodies and sent us fleeing. Safety was separation, community was danger. Quarantine defined life. It was necessary to detach so we might live. All was beyond our control. Where was God in our death, isolation, division, and fear</p>
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<p class="text">Christians enter the season of Advent knowing that Jesus, the God-Human, came to rescue the world. A world overrun by inescapable darkness: God’s good creation was the occupied territory of Sin and Death. The people of God longed for God’s promised intervention. Hope for liberation persisted.</p>
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<p class="text">Jesus is God’s deliverance: the rescuing Savior, the chosen Messiah, the ruling Lord.<a href="#_ftn1" target="_blank" class="">[1]</a> His purpose was to <em>“bring good news to the poor… proclaim release to the captives and sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”<a href="#_ftn2" target="_blank" class=""><strong>[2]</strong></a></em> The inescapable darkness became more than merely escapable. The reigning control of Sin and Death was utterly severed by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.</p>
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<p class="text">And yet.</p>
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<p class="text">And yet, we are overrun by a pandemic. We are overrun by violence, scarcity, bigotry, lies – we are even overrun by our own selves. Our wants, desires, ways of thinking and living, continually spiral away from God.<a href="#_ftn3" target="_blank" class="">[3]</a> The darkness is very real, very near.</p>
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<p class="text">Advent looks at Jesus’ arrival and sees the approaching liberation from Sin and Death. Advent aches for Christmas because Easter is breathtaking. Advent represents the longing for God’s intervention 2000 years ago, but it also represents our longing for ...</p><p class="more"><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/scot-mcknight/2021/december/advent-in-contested-territory-god-with-us.html">Continue reading</a>...</p>
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<p><br /><a href="https://rss.beaconads.com/click.php?z=1289806&k=c779018782158d93282944b4f7dd4d03&a=191311&c=73998767" target="_blank"><img src="https://rss.beaconads.com/img.php?z=1289806&k=c779018782158d93282944b4f7dd4d03&a=191311&c=73998767" border="0" alt="" /></a></p>
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