Week One
December 1, 2021
This Too Shall Pass?
Psalm 90
For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. Psalm 90:4
Psalm 90 points out that time is experienced differently for God than it is for us. What we experience is just a blip in time, “a thousand years…are like yesterday.” We run the risk of allowing this time-perception difference to minimize what is happening right now in our lives.
In the middle of a pandemic (third wave, fourth wave, who knows anymore), fires destroying land and forests, and weather destroying cities and people destroying each other—this time seems like an eternity, a never-ending horror movie. We can’t run fast enough. We just seem to keep falling down and making things worse. Will we ever be able to leave this phase of peril and destruction? This isn’t just a blink of the eye to us; it is our all-consuming existence.
Enter Jesus. The celebration of the birth of Jesus offers us moments of peace, hope, joy and love in the middle of what feels like death, chaos and destruction. A friend recently gave birth. I sat and held the sleeping newborn. The only reminder of the world circumstances I had was the mask on my face.
Nothing else mattered in that moment. Time slowed down. The contentment and peace the baby had as she slept transferred to me. This magical transference is mystical, divine, the peace and love and joy and hope that we all need.
All the chaos around them had to completely disappear when Mary and Joseph held Jesus. That is what Jesus brings us now. The hope and joy and peace and love that we all need. During this Advent season may we steal those moments in the midst of the current chaos.
Malisa Pierce
Senior Director of Stewardship and Alumnae/i Relations
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
