Light a candle and pray: Jesus light of the world shine into our darkness and be our Love!
Pray Psalm 89:1-4
Read Matthew 17:1-13
Reflection by Angie Burke: Dear Grace and Mercy,
Here we are, in the final week of Advent. Thank you all so much for your participation in reading, sharing, and praying together this Advent. I do feel the spiritual connection of our body through the practice of Advent this year, and am so grateful for it.
While praying over and meditating on the concept of love, I felt a very real invitation. An invitation for myself, but also for us as a body.
1 John 4:7-16
"7 Dear friends, let us love one another,for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of Godand knows God.8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God;but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us."
The invitation is the whole thing- to live in God and to live with God in us. It is ESPECIALLY in verse 14, though. This is the verse that seems to actually lift itself off the page. That we, individually and collectively, have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the World.
We are invited to testify.
I pray that our sight for this truth, and our ability to testify to it will expand and grow into the next year.
May we embody the love that is made complete in us and love well. May we believe our beloved status.
Christ came as the Savior of the World, is the Savior, and will continue to be our salvation.
May we partake in the never ending Sabbath and live out hope, peace, joy, and love as people who do not depend on our production, but belong to the land of the living through the love of Christ. May our souls feel their worth. May they feel the worth of the souls around us.
Every single one of you is loved, and will spend time this week praying with gratitude and wonder about the ways that Christ has revealed Himself to each of us, and to us as a body. It has been my great delight to walk with you all, and to hear and see so many testimonies to the hope, peace, joy, and love in your lives.
Lord, grant us the sight to see Jesus, and grant us the ability to testify to your work in our pasts, in our present, and in our futures. Amen.
Merry Christmas, Grace & Mercy Church.