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    Advent: Preparation, Anticipation, & Hope in Christ's Coming
    Advent: Preparation, Anticipation, & Hope in Christ's Coming
    Advent: Preparation, Anticipation, & Hope in Christ's Coming
    Ebook196 pages2 hours

    Advent: Preparation, Anticipation, & Hope in Christ's Coming

    By David McDonald

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    About this ebook

    Author Dr. David McDonald explores the reason, the anticipation, and the hope of Advent. Discover the real meaning behind this liturgical season. Dream once again about the life you want and the ways you can cooperate with God to begin living that life now. With a helpful, practical study guide at the end of each section, this book can help you use the Advent season to deepen your spiritual life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSamizdat Creative
    Release dateNov 19, 2010
    ISBN9781452438146
    Advent: Preparation, Anticipation, & Hope in Christ's Coming

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      Book preview

      Advent - David McDonald

      Advent: Preparation, Anticipation, & Hope in Christ’s Coming

      Dr. David McDonald

      Published by Samizdat Creative

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2010 Dr. David McDonald

      Visit Dr. David McDonald’s website at http://www.shadowinggod.com.

      Visit Samizdat Creative’s website at http://www.samizdatcreative.com.

      This book is also available at most online retailers.

      All Scriptures used in this Atlas are taken from the NIV translation unless otherwise indicated.

      Discover other e-book titles by David McDonald:

      Down to Earth: Why We’re Really Here and Why It Matters

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Foreword

      Introduction

      Section One: Christ Is Coming

      Chapter 1: What Is Advent About?

      Chapter 2: Who Is Coming and Why?

      Chapter 3: How Did It Get This Way?

      Chapter 4: How Will It Get Fixed?

      Chapter 5: Advent Changes Things

      the elements of spiritual formation

      Section Two: Preparation for Christ’s Coming

      Chapter 6: Be Ready

      Chapter 7: The Cynics

      Chapter 8: The Antagonists

      Chapter 9: The Co-operants and Visionaries

      the elements of spiritual formation

      Section Three: Anticipating Christ’s Coming

      Chapter 10: Christianity Is Eschatology

      Chapter 11: Parousia

      Chapter 12: Stranger in a Strange Land

      Chapter 13: Anticipating the End

      Chapter 14: Living in the Present-Future

      the elements of spiritual formation

      Section Four: Hope in Christ’s Coming

      Chapter 15: A New Hope

      Chapter 16: Hope for Healing

      Chapter 17: Hope for Restoration

      the elements of spiritual formation

      Conclusion

      Resource List

      Foreword

      Advent heralds Christ’s coming, whispering to us his promise of a fresh start. The Evangelical church, however, often has focused narrowly on Christ’s Second Coming to the neglect of his first coming and almost to the exclusion of his perpetual coming within us and among us. Spiritual formation, the Spirit’s work of shaping us more into the image and likeness of Christ, could be described simply as preparation: as preparing us for Christ’s coming. Advent invites us into deeper spiritual formation.

      One of the strangest requests from a church member I ever received as a pastor was when twenty-four year old Andrea traipsed into my office, settled into the chair across from my desk, and boldly asked for permission to have an affair with her doctor. Her husband didn’t understand her; her doctor did. What was she looking for, a signed note from her pastor? After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I stuttered something completely unpremeditated: What would you do if you knew Jesus was coming back at the end of the week? Andrea’s eyes narrowed with annoyance: I wouldn’t do it, she exclaimed. I should have paused longer to help her process her inner struggle, but both her question and her answer surprised me. She believed in Jesus; she wanted to follow him; ultimately she wanted to do what would please him. In light of eternity the choice was clear to her. Case closed.

      If we only knew the hour of Christ’s arrival we would be prepared, wouldn’t we? Unlike the Foolish Virgins, we’d have our lamps trimmed, right? What I began to realize after my encounter with Andrea, however, is that we face this situation of Christ’s coming daily. Whether Christ returns in cloud-splitting glory at the end of next week or we get struck by a falling asteroid, the result for us remains the same. Prepared or unprepared, we face God. This realization prompted me to adjust the introduction to the undergraduate spiritual formation class I teach—so that I now begin with the following question: What would you do if you knew you had only one year left to live? Our answer to that question reveals much about the current state of our soul and our spiritual formation.

      Bucket List, the movie staring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, illustrates the point. Two older men meet in a hospital room, and after they each discover they have terminal cancer, they decide to live out their kick the bucket list—what they hope to do before they die. First human instinct: experience the thrill of life, go for the gusto, taste the wine, see the sunset. So the two men sky dive, race stock cars, and tour the world. Second human intuition: mend our broken relationships. Nicholson struggles through the last part of the film to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

      Dave tells a story in this book about his wife Carmel and her reconciliation with her mother Katherine before her mom died. Katherine had hurt her daughter deeply. But the opportunity came to make peace. It was an important day, Dave recalls, because it was Katherine’s last day alive. Yet it was only because Carmel had already been working on forgiving her mum that she was able to make peace with her when the time came. Dave explains: That’s the power of recognizing Christ when he comes: no regrets, no missed opportunities, no moments of self-doubt during which time we wonder if we’ll ever get the chance to make some long wrong right. Within that illustration of brokenness mended we see both the fragility of the human condition and the beauty of Christ’s coming to heal. Every time we climb into a car we stare our frail mortality in the face. Psalm 39 describes human existence as a passing shadow. We never know the number of our days. The reality of such a vulnerable existence could cause us either to despair or to live with a new awareness of the preciousness of life. Early Christians lived precisely with this hope, calling each other to vigilance, alertness, prayerfulness, and joy. Awake, sleepers, cries Paul, and Christ will give you light!

      What would you do, then, if you discovered you had only a year left to live? Would you alter your life much? If, for instance, you would work less and laugh more, or spend more time with family and less time accumulating stuff, the question becomes why don’t you start doing that now? Someone approached St. Augustine while he was planting his orchard and asked what he would do if he knew Christ was going to return at the end of the day. Augustine replied laconically that he would finish planting his orchard. Because Augustine lived in Christ, he did not need to change his course radically in order to meet Christ without embarrassment. He lived ready. He prepared to die by the way he lived. What would it mean for us to begin living without regrets, living in way compatible with our highest ideals? If Advent nudges us awake, telling us to prepare for the coming King, it also reveals our longing to be well, whole, and right with God when Christ does show up. We long to live in such a way that we don’t disappoint ourselves. You will discover in this book that Christ comes to teach us what a fully human life looks like when it’s lived out under the canopy of God’s love. Brokenness spills out everywhere in the world. Brokenness spills out in us, but Christ comes to bring healing.

      The answer to the question of what we would do with the last year of our life is really another question: What is it we really want? What is it we’re really longing for? Advent is about longing, about waiting—about Israel yearning and waiting for the Messiah, about the Church vigilantly waiting for the return of Christ. So what are we waiting for this Advent season? Not for more stuff under the tree I suspect! What are the things worth waiting for?

      Advent is a soul-shaping season. Winston Churchill suggested that first we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us. We could make the same claim about our worship: first we shape our worship—our seasons like Advent—afterwards our worship shapes us. Let the reflections in the following pages challenge you to re-shape significant things in your life—into a more holy, more human, more Christ-like form. Advent trumpets Christ’s coming: Christ has come, Christ is coming, Christ will come again.

      Robert Moore-Jumonville, Ph.D.

      Professor of Spiritual Formation, Spring Arbor University

      Introduction

      Our whole life is Advent – that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: on earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.

      Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 20th C German pastor and Nazi antagonist

      I confess. Despite having spent a great deal of my life in church ministry, I know nothing about the liturgical calendar. I’m a liturgical virgin. But a couple of years ago a friend of mine showed up at work on Ash Wednesday wearing a smudgy gray cross on her forehead. Like thousands of others, she had attended an early morning Mass and received the sign of the cross on her face as a reminder to carry the sacrificial death of Jesus with her all day (and all year…and all her life) long.

      Because I knew my friend wasn’t nuts, her actions intrigued me.

      A few months later, another of my friends – a gal I knew from high school – proudly announced on Facebook that she was leaving her contemporary church in favor of a liturgical one.

      There was that word again. Liturgy. I found it that it means the work of the people. In real-life it means that both the services those people attend and when they have traditionally chosen to attend them are largely scripted according to theme, season, and meaning.

      I’m not keen on scripts, but I am especially keen on theme and meaning. So this book represents my efforts to get on board the liturgical train and ride it all season long.

      Advent.

      Christmastide.

      Epiphany.

      Ordinary Time.

      Septuagisima et al.

      Lent.

      Holy Week.

      Easter

      Tridiuum.

      Eastertide.

      Ascension.

      Pentecost.

      Trinity.

      Even as I write these words, each representing the big seasons of the liturgical calendar, I have no real clue what they mean. I trust I will. I trust that the process of excavating better than a thousand years of Christian history and tradition will hold some real-world relevance for me. And for you, be ye virgin or matriarch (in the liturgical sense, of course).

      I begin with Advent, with the coming of the Savior. I suppose that’s only appropriate.

      For most of my Christian experience, any and all speculation or imagination surrounding Christ’s coming centered on the next time he’d show up, not the first time. Whether with movies like Thief in the Night or books like Left Behind, it seems we love to fantasize about the Second Coming, but the first one seems too quaint to bother with any longer. Don’t get me wrong, there are still pageants at plenty of churches and lots of songs and turkey stuffing; but there’s no imagination to Christmas anymore, and that’s a bit sad.

      It’s like all of our fervor goes into imagining the Second Coming, while the First Coming is relegated only to sentiment.

      That seems backwards, doesn’t it? I mean, our best theologians and biblical scholars have loudly proclaimed for years that the popular conception of the Second Coming in the Western church is not rooted in the Bible at all but – instead – on a bunch of campy B-movies and that old book The Late Great Planet Earth. If anything, our scholars and teachers tell us that we ought to hope for God’s great cleanup of the world while simultaneously not being too particular about when and how that happens.

      In short, we ought to appreciate the real hope that he is coming again, but understand that our ideas about how that will occur are likely sentimental.

      On the flip side, though, these same learned dons tell us that we know for sure how Christ came the first time around and can take tremendous inspiration and prophetic verve from his meager birth, humble beginnings, and triumph over opposition. They tell us that our cartoonish renderings of cute stables and kingly

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