Advent Meditations: Friday 4 December

Dec 4, 2020 by

Fri
Dec 4
am: 16,
pm: 22
Isaiah 3:8-15 1 Thess 4:1-12 Luke 20:41-21:4

 

Feast of Nicholas Ferrer, Deacon, Spiritual Director, 1637Ordained as a deacon, he and his family and a few friends established Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, England, to devote themselves to a life of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. They wrote books and stories dealing with various aspects of Christian faith and practice. They fasted with great rigor, and in other ways embraced voluntary poverty, so that they might have as much money as possible for the relief of the poor.  Deacon Ferrer died in 1637, and in 1646 the community was forcibly broken up by the Puritans and Cromwell’s army

Meditation – We live in an age of worry and concern  where the simple idea of going to grocery store, taking public  transport or being in a social engagement  can be a matter of life and death. We live in a day when societies  seek to beat each other into submission of matters of race and politics. We live in a time when church fragmentation is perfected instead of the unity it is called to uphold and preserve. When you consider that this is the norm for the Christian in the 21st Century, one does take pause to consider the lesson from Isaiah whose people faced similar concerns as the Hebrew people lost their way. On this day when we recall  Nicholas Ferrer and his community at Little Giddings his people of his time also faced grave danger and so he committed to forging a people set apart.

 

PRAYER: Gracious God, help me to be a peacemaker this Advent and to give special love to those who disagree with me. Give me the strength and courage to forgive those who have hurt me. Help me to free my heart from the prison of my anger and resentment so I may prepare for your coming kingdom. Amen!

 

ACTIVITY – Take a virtual tour of Little Giddings. https://parabola.org/2017/03/22/polychromatic-mysticism-a-visit-to-little-gidding-by-j-m-white/

 

ANCIENT WISDOM/PRESENT GRACE: I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.— T.S. Eliot

See also: Advent Devotion 5 from GAFCON

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