A Surprising God

Advent Devotions for an Uncertain Time

Thomas G. Long, Donyelle C. McCray

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780664267230
• eBook ISBN: 9781646982158
• Topic: Theology & Religion

The world is slowly emerging from the worst global emergency in a century, and the myriad struggles of the contemporary moment—division, isolation, illness, and uncertainty—make living our faith a challenge. For Christians, a number of questions have gained new urgency: Where do we find hope when it seems in such short supply? Where are the signs of God's peace in this divided world? Where do we find a deeper sense of joy?

Thomas G. Long and Donyelle C. McCray remind us that these are the questions of Advent in their new daily devotional, A Surprising God. Mindful of the stresses of life today in a world torn apart by conflict, marked by political division, and in the midst of a global health crisis, these devotions for Advent and Christmas invite readers to honest reflection on the challenges of being people of faith in this moment. Long and McCray explore what it means to wait for our salvation, to be open to the surprising thing that God is about to do, and to find hope in God's choice of the small and the insignificant.

Third Week of Advent

Day 1

God the Gardener

Luke 3:7–18

“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming.”

—Luke 3:16

A couple of years back, a thoughtful friend gave my wife and me a lovely, single-stem orchid plant with a beautiful white bloom. We carefully read the accompanying card that gave instructions for care. “It needs good light, but cannot withstand direct sunlight,” were among the warnings, so we placed the plant on a table near, but not under, a window.

Three weeks later, disaster. The bloom was gone, the few leaves that hadn’t dropped off were crinkled and brown, and the stem was clearly drooping. The poor orchid had fallen victim to a simple misunderstanding. I thought my wife was taking charge of the watering, and she thought I was.

“We’ll know better next time,” I said. “I’ll toss it.”

According to the Gospel of Luke, John the Baptist had something of the same instincts for gardening that I do. Out on the banks of the Jordan River, John faced a sere and stiff-necked crowd and gave them a stark greeting: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Luke 3:7). Seeing no evidence of fruitfulness in their lives, he declared that he was ready to toss them out altogether. “Even now,” he thundered, “the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9).

As I reached for the desiccated orchid to take it to the trash can, my wife gently touched my arm. “Let me try something,” she said. She brought a glass of water from the kitchen and slowly drizzled water at the base of the plant, gently stirring the caked soil as she poured. Every day thereafter, she did the same, until one day, the plant miraculously sprung back to life. Two years later, it still bears white blooms, rescued by my wife’s patience.

Later in Luke, we learn the good news that God is a gardener, too, and that, fortunately, God’s gardening is more like my wife’s than mine. Jesus tells the story of a man who had a fig tree that wasn’t bearing fruit. The man, disgusted that the barren tree was wasting soil, ordered it cut down, but the man’s gardener said, “Let’s give it some more time. I’d like to try something” (see Luke 13:6–9).

In those places in life where things seem hopeless, it is God’s patient way to “give it more time.” A by-product of our frazzled and contentious society is the pressure to lose patience, which, in many ways, is the same as losing hope. A person makes a mistake in public, and social media fills up with demands that this person be rebuked, scorned, fired, banished. How quickly we lose patience with our neighbors, our families, perhaps even ourselves. “Let’s toss it,” we say. “Even now,” we threaten, “the ax is poised to swing.”

But it is deep good news that God is not this kind of gardener. God’s love is patient, and, as the psalmist sings, “the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting” (Ps. 103:17). I am especially grateful for this when I remember those seasons in my own life when the blooms had dropped away, the leaves had turned brown, and my spirit drooped. It was then that I felt the tender care of God, pouring the water of life around me, gently stirring the soil, mercifully nurturing me back to life.

Prayer for the Day

Teach us patience, O merciful God. Let us be as gentle, nurturing, and life-giving to others as you always are to us in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Day 2

“As the Waters Cover the Sea”

Isaiah 11:1–9

They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD

as the waters cover the sea.

—Isaiah 11:9

The Rocks of Saint Peter and Saint Paul lie about 700 miles off the coast of Brazil in the center of the Atlantic Ocean. Their rough terrain and sparse vegetation draw few visitors other than sea fowl, but they have a hidden splendor. These little islands are mountain summits in one of the world’s longest mountain ranges: the Atlantic Ridge.

Under water, the mountains carve a majestic “S” in the center of the ocean. Shrouded in silt, they stand like a family in procession 10,000 miles long. With the right camera, one can see the resemblance in their bare, rocky slopes.¹ But, huddled as they are in the dark deep, their crevices and folds are only visible to sea life and oceanographers.

Now it is unlikely that Isaiah had undersea mountains in mind when he gave his oracle about God’s peace, but they shed light on the meaning of his prophecy. “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” The Atlantic Ridge gives us a sense of how much water covers the sea—enough to hide a 10,000-mile mountain range! God’s peace will engulf the world conflicts that dominate the landscape of history. All of the confusion, all of the worries, all of the painful memories, and every one of the doubts that plague us will be subsumed in an ocean of peace.

Clearly, the peace God promises is from another realm, but we can participate in it now. We can follow God’s current of grace and float odd virtues like gentleness and meekness that rarely seem to have a place on shore. We can shed the crusty defenses we have built up “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”

Carried by the sea’s mysterious rhythm, maybe we will finally discover our true oneness with God’s creation. Rachel Carson revels in this unity. “Fish, amphibian, and reptile, warm-blooded bird and mammal—each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water.”² If we have biochemical similarities, doesn’t this suggest that we have the potential to live in harmony? Doesn’t this suggest that, as Isaiah says, peace is our destiny?

When justice and peace feel elusive, when the enemies of peace rage with unprecedented power, it helps to follow the model of the undersea mountains. Calmly, they urge us not to grow weary or shrink back, but to be strong and steady—bold witnesses to the coming peace of God.

Prayer for the Day

God of all serenity, your peace knows no bounds and your vision for wholeness always exceeds human imagination. Prepare us for the gentle world that is to come. Help us now to be vessels of your grace driven by the invisible current of the Spirit. We pray in the holy name of Jesus. Amen.

Day 3

The Peaceful Kingdom

Isaiah 11:1–9

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

—Isaiah 11:6

People of faith have always dreamed of a time when God will bring perfect peace. John in the book of Revelation dreamed that God “will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Rev. 21:4). Jeremiah hoped for a great day when God’s law would be written in people’s hearts, and no teachers would be needed because “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer. 31:34). The prophet Isaiah spoke of the dream using a beautiful image of shalom, of all nature at peace: “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid” (Isa. 11:6).

For some people, all of these dreams of God’s peace are just that—dreams. They are, some say, too idealistic, too “pie in the sky,” too out of touch with the rough-and-tumble realities of life. “The lion will lie down with the lamb,” Woody Allen famously quipped, “but the lamb won’t get much sleep.” One contemporary hymn speaks of a faith rooted in the here and now and scorns the pie-in-the-sky hope of “some heaven light years away.”³

But the biblical visions of God’s peaceful kingdom are not merely sweet and pious otherworldly sentiments. They are, to the contrary, affirmations of trust in God’s goodness and sources of courage and hope precisely in the midst of life’s struggles. It is an irony of faith that the promises of God always look perilously fragile, always appear to be no match for real life. Biblical scholars remind us that Isaiah’s vision of God’s shalom came when Jerusalem was at one of its weakest points, when God’s people were at the mercy of powerful enemies. And who could have imagined that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• First Week of Advent
• Second Week of Advent
• Third Week of Advent
• Fourth Week of Advent
• Notes
• Excerpt from Lent in Plain Sight, by Jill J. Duffield