THE CANOPY

"...Over all the glory will be a canopy. 

It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day,

and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain."

-- Isaiah 4:5-6

            What an awesome picture of the Church consumed by the glory of her God. 

            His presence is like a canopy and under the canopy, where His Church dwells, His glory permeates everything.

            His presence means shade in the heat of the day.

            His presence means refuge and protection in the harsh realities of life.

            The glory of God in the midst of His people is something I wonder about a lot.  I don't want to push the image too much but it reminds me of dew on an autumn morning.  Everything is touched by it.  Everything feels it presence. 

            So it is with the glory of God.  It falls into every nook and cranny.  Nothing escapes its presence.  Life becomes lived out in His consuming presence.  Every fiber of our soul comes to feel the impact of His presence.  We don't know life outside of it.

            His permeating presence envelops us in intimacy so that life becomes lived out in the embrace of God. 

            Who He is becomes the dominating influence in our lives and the things that move Him, move us;  the things that grieve Him, grieve us. 

            Who He is becomes our strength  as we discover in the very real moments of our lives the sheltering grace of God.

            Who He is becomes a cooling shade in the midst of a hot and humid life experience.

            Who He is becomes the restoring refuge where we are not only protected but refreshed and re-energized to write the chapters of our lives that are yet to be written.

            Who He is becomes a hiding place where we come into His presence and discover the peace that passes all ability to understand and where we are made new in our spirits just because we have been with Him.

            Life under the canopy --that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. 

            Life lived out in the all-consuming grace of Almighty God --that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

            Life caught up in the things that move the heart of God -- that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

            I'm not sure I understand what "glory" really means but it must have something to do with a sense of awe and greatness and wonder and amazement --something that can't really be described but must be personally experienced in order to be comprehended.   So when I think about the glory of God under the canopy I find my heart pounding and my knees shaking and my spirit awakening and my eyes tearing and my pulse quickening and my mind racing and my emotions flooding. 

            Life in the glory of God, under the canopy of God, caught up in the being of God, and embraced daily by the reality God -- who would have thought it?

THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

It was a deep joy to celebrate the Advent Season, wasn’t it?  The birth of Jesus has, indeed, changed our lives.  Each year it becomes clearer and clearer that what God did in Jesus by becoming a baby, born in Bethlehem, has ramifications and implications that go on and on even into the wonderful mystery of eternity. 

Advent isn’t about economics, even though our culture has high jacked it and turned it into a shop-till-you drop phenomenon. Advent isn’t about people exchanging gifts, even though that is what we have made it to be.  No, Advent is about the self-emptying of God in an outrageous act of humility that moved Him to come among us, to bring the life of God into all our lives.  Advent is about something God did and about how that act so profoundly touches our lives that any word less that redemption is far too inadequate a word to catch its full meaning.

A bumper sticker reads, “Jesus Is The Reason For The Season.”  Bumper sticker theology doesn’t normally catch my attention but this one liner does.  The reason for the season isn’t gift exchanges, or trees, or lights, or music, or parades, or parties, or a day off from a hectic paced work place.  The reason for the season is this awesome, remarkable, wonderful person named, Jesus, who of His on volition came into history as a baby, grew up in a Jewish home in the Holy Land, and then, wonder of wonders, “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race.”  

It is a pure joy to be a part of a people who take Jesus seriously.  We love Christmas around our church, but it seems we love Advent more; and, for this I am extremely grateful.  In the midst of all the hype surrounding December 25, we have learned to fix our eyes on Jesus.  We have seen a bigger story.  We have seen a truthful story.  We have seen a story that sets people free rather than stressing them out.  By the gift of God’s amazing grace we see beyond the physical and material into the spiritual and eternal.  Our hero is not a jolly little fat man dressed in a red suit, as much fun as he is.  Rather our hero (Redeemer is a better word) is a sacrificial self-giving Savior who in the end will die on a cross, be buried in a borrowed tomb, and then be raised from the dead, revealing to the world that He is, indeed, Lord of lords and King of kings.

I pray you were blessed beyond your most imaginative expectations in this past Advent season.  May you know the peace of Christ in a greater way than you have ever experienced His peace before.  And, even as you seek to be faithful to the incarnate Christ whose birth we celebrate every day of our lives, may He bless you, and keep you; may He make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you; may He lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace (Numbers 6:24-26).