Advent
Meditation
December
21st
29.
Dream On!
Matt
2:13 When
they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get
up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to
Egypt .
Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child
to kill him."
There
are two forms of belief that are equally bad. There is the belief that
there is no God, the belief of atheism that flies in the face of all
the evidence to the contrary, but there is also the belief that there
is a God but He stands outside of this world and has nothing to do with
it. Now although all Christians, hopefully, would deny the latter belief,
many in fact live as if it were true. In how many churches, and in how
many Christians, is there the belief that God talks to his people? Again,
many will say that He does, but live like He doesn't! That is tragic,
so we must look at these verses carefully.
Already
we've seen dreams as a form of guidance twice in the Christmas story.
Joseph is with Mary as the result of a dream. He committed his life
to her on the strength of a dream. The wise men didn't go back home
via Herod as the result of a dream. Now Joseph has another dream, warning
him to take the family south, out of the country into Egypt,
before Herod comes searching for the child.
Now
consider this more fully. How easy would it have been for Mary to say
to Joseph, “Oh, don't be silly, you're just worrying unnecessarily.
It's probably because of what those strange men from the East said.
Let's just go home.” How easy it is to write off or find reasons to
counter such things. This is the thing about divine guidance; most of
the time there is room to doubt it. That's what faith is about. It's
about responding simply to what God says, and that requires a belief,
first of all, that it was God speaking. This is what makes the Christmas
story so uncomfortable – when you stop to think about it. It's about
people who get tenuous guidance and base their lives on that. It reminds
us that Christians are called to life by faith, not by sight (2 Cor
5:7) and as one well-known preacher said a number of years ago, “Faith
is spelt R-I-S-K!”
As
we approach Christmas, and come near to the end of the year, the challenge
that this story brings us, again and again, is will we be like these
people in this story, will we simply respond to the simple word from
God? In one sense, all else is secondary. It's come up before in this
story, and we need to hear it again – and again! Will we give ourselves
to what God says? Sometimes we will hear His fresh word very clearly,
and in those times it will be relatively easy to do His will. When we've
had a ‘mountaintop experience' and the presence of God has been very
real, at that point it seems very easy to say, yes, I'll go, I'll do
it! But what about those other times, the times that are, realistically,
the majority of the times, when we are walking alone in the valley –
for that's what it feels like! At those times will our faith be expressed
in keeping on faithfully doing the things He's spoken in His word, the
Bible, or the last thing He spoke to us at the last mountaintop experience?
Jesus
once put it very simply: “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith
on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). What he was saying was, when he returns
will he find us full of faith, being who we're called to be, doing what
we've been called to do, with an ear open to heaven? Joseph heard God
through dreams. That was the way the Lord seemed to use most with him.
What is it or what will it be with you? Will you hear through His word,
through the preaching, or through the quiet nudge of the Spirit? Dream
on, read on, listen on, continue to be sensitive – or learn to hear
through one or more of these ways. There's nothing more important than
hearing God – except obeying what you hear!
If
you wish to e-mail us any comment on this meditation please click here
:
tony.thomas@rochfordcc.co.uk
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