Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 15, 2020

We are in the third week of Advent, one marked by joy that our Savior’s arrival is near!  But, it can be hard to feel joy, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing these times of intense strug­gling in our world.  Our read­ings high­light some poten­tial bar­ri­ers for us to feel­ing the joy of Christ’s arrival.

In our read­ings today, we hear from the prophet Zepha­ni­ah in the first read­ing, and about Jesus in the Gospel read­ing about those who hear, believe and act. A theme that emerges for me is about the need to exam­ine our behav­iors and lifestyle, and per­haps exhib­it God’s mer­cy in new and explic­it ways.  Jesus high­lights how some of the reli­gious lead­ers, and those who would have been expect­ed to enter the king­dom of God, seem­ing­ly ignored the mes­sage of repen­tance and believ­ing.  Per­haps they lacked fol­low through, hav­ing good inten­tions but not real­ly show­ing their change of heart in their deeds.

It may be easy for me, and for us, to judge oth­ers.  It may be com­mon­place for us to mea­sures our­selves as being in a place that is more advanced or bet­ter than oth­ers – oth­ers who are not as reli­gious, not as moral, not as open to receiv­ing God’s call.  We may have heard Jesus’ words for many years and think that we can be com­pla­cent with our deeds.  And yet, Jesus calls out this think­ing and invites all of us to a deep open­ness to let­ting our hearts fall in love with, and be led by Jesus today dur­ing this Advent sea­son and each day as we move forward. 

There are some chal­leng­ing ques­tions that these read­ings invite me to.  I ask myself:

Where have I been quick to say “yes” in work­ing in the vine­yard but then lacked the fol­low through, or pri­or­i­ti­za­tion or real lis­ten­ing?
When have I thought that I already knew how what to do and didn’t deeply hear what God was ask­ing of me? 
When have I doubt­ed oth­ers’ will­ing­ness or abil­i­ty to act in line with God’s invi­ta­tion?
When have I, even sub­tly, judged oth­ers and per­ceived myself as bet­ter than oth­ers?
And so, this sea­son, as we are all strug­gling in new and ongo­ing ways, I pray for Christ’s light to trans­form my heart and deeds, and all of our hearts and deeds. I invite us to ask our­selves where we might change and inten­tion­al­ly act this sea­son, poten­tial­ly in a new and dif­fer­ent way. We pray to know and mod­el Christ’s joy in the world – par­tic­u­lar­ly in this glob­al pan­dem­ic, with increased COVID cas­es, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths, in our eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty, in our striv­ing for racial jus­tice and jus­tice for all those on the margins. 

In these remain­ing days of this Advent sea­son, may we tru­ly know the joy that Christ offers us.