Advent Instrumental – by Don Coppo
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Thursday, Day 12: The with-God life
Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds, the leaders of Israel. Give them this message from the Sovereign Lord: What sorrow awaits you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of your flocks. …4 You have not taken care of the weak. You have not tended the sick or bound up the injured. You have not gone looking for those who have wandered away and are lost. Instead, you have ruled them with harshness and cruelty. 5 So my sheep have been scattered without a shepherd, and they are easy prey for any wild animal. 6 They have wandered through all the mountains and all the hills, across the face of the earth, yet no one has gone to search for them. Ezekiel 34: 1:2, 4-6
Thought: You feed yourselves instead. Yet another Advent Lectionary reading that has the power to stop us in our tracks! Can we find ourselves with-God here, too? Have you ever been more concerned about your own desires rather than the call of God? The scriptures are clear that there are shepherds who have not cared for the sheep. God’s words are clear that these leaders have not searched for the weak …or sought God for forgiveness for these neglectful sins. The with-God life makes us aware of those that are lost, weak and injured. When we ignore God’s voice we miss the invitation to bring care and healing to others. When we live according to our own appetites we starve what God wants to grow.
Practice: Ask God how you may be ignoring His desire to fulfill your own desires. Confess times you’ve decided to feed your own appetite by doing what you want to do the way you want to do it. Seek forgiveness, fall on God’s mercy… seek His grace and find the humility to go back to the call God has on your life.
Prayer: Dear God, Advent, is a season for prayer and reformation of my heart. Since it comes at winter time, fire is a fitting sign to help me celebrate Advent…If Christ is to come more fully into my life this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate in me, then fire will have to be present in my prayer. My worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in my soul that can truly change my hearts. Mine is a great responsibility not to waste this Advent time. Amen (prayer based on Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, p. 187)
Bluebook (Lectionary) Reading: Ezekiel 34:1-10
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©Advent Music 2011-by Don Coppo
©Jesus and the Lamb-by Helen Glover