Advent: Celebrating

As we continue to watch for God at work, we enter a week that we celebrate. We start with Amos, finally--good news in Amos.

"On that day," God says. "On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old." On that day the healing starts, on that day the promise is good.

I am always so relieved to get to this part of Amos that I tend to forget what goes before. Usually, I don't read the book straight through...it's lectionary or devotional reading, so this gets separated from the "punishment" phase. And how quickly we forget that this promise comes in the darkest of dark. "...the booth of David...is fallen..."

And "that day" is coming, life is still in ruins, in shambles. But "that day" is coming. And we celebrate because we have seen God's faithfulness in the past, and we trust God's faithfulness will be seen again.

And the "will be seen" is important. God's faithfulness never goes away, but often we don't see it, especially when we are being corrected, when we are suffering. Part of the journey of the mature disciple is learning to trust God's faithfulness when it is unseen.

So the Advent pattern of worship and study helps us practice living in to this. We walk through darkness together, seeing the judgment, seeing the darkness of our situation. We watch for the coming of our redemption, the coming of the Kingdom. And now we celebrate.

We are still in the darkness. We are waiting for the in-breaking. But we are celebrating the reality.

God is present. God is at work. God will raise us up "on that day." God is raising us up today and every day.

It's a promise.

It's our promise.