Multimedia Advent Devotional – Week 3-7, Saturday
2023:
Week 3, Saturday:
- Scripture – Psalm 25:4-5, 8-10, 14 (Pam Cammarata)
- Reflection (Nancy Penton)
- Prayer (Karis Sculley)
- Artwork: “Nativity” (Gustave Doré)
- Music: “I Run to You” (Project of Love) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr5kY2AdIKA
Each short Multimedia Advent Devotional is an invitation to set aside time each day during a typically busy season preparing for Christmas to rejoice in the coming of our Savior, Christ Jesus, and to respond to God’s invitation to us to join with Him in what He’s doing today.
Advent is a season of the liturgical year observed in most Christian denominations as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for both the celebration of the Nativity of Christ at Christmas and the return of Christ at the Second Coming. Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year in Western Christianity and is part of the wider Christmas and holiday season.
This collaboration is brought to you by Liberty Vineyard Church
2022:
Week 3, Saturday:
- Scripture: Matthew 8:14-17 (Michael Sculley)
- Reflection (Karen Sculley)
- Prayer (Dawn Roberson)
- Artwork: “Mary Praying” (Tennessee, USA)
- Music: “Light Dawns on a Weary World” (Marty Haugen and Marc Anderson) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0GEA_FtnW8
Each short Multimedia Advent Devotional is an invitation to set aside time each day during a typically busy season preparing for Christmas to rejoice in the coming of our Savior, Christ Jesus, and to respond to God’s invitation to us to join with Him in what He’s doing today.
Advent is a season of the liturgical year observed in most Christian denominations as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for both the celebration of the Nativity of Christ at Christmas and the return of Christ at the Second Coming. Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year in Western Christianity and is part of the wider Christmas and holiday season.
This collaboration is brought to you by Liberty Vineyard Church
Reflection:
Matthew 8:14-17 (NIV) – “When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him. When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.’”
This short account begins with Jesus coming into a specific person’s home in a specific location on a specific day. Jesus saw a specific person with a specific ailment. In this encounter with Jesus, the woman was immediately transformed. She went from malady to cordiality, from infirmity to generosity. Like Peter’s mother-in-law and the many others not named in this story, we, too, are invited to encounter Christ Jesus in the middle our struggles, whether physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, financial, relational. When Jesus is in the house, we are transformed. We don’t know how we will be transformed, and it’s a mistake to assume that transformation will always look the same way, for example, instantaneous healing. If we make that assumption, then we’re in essence claiming to know more than God! God’s ways are so much higher than our ways! But, we can be confident that whenever we encounter Christ Jesus, God’s Kingdom breaks through. Believing in the already and not yet of the kingdom means we can ask God and believe God for miracles, while also trusting God in the middle of pain. We live in the tension between the sorrow and suffering in this world and the joy and justice of the Kingdom of God which is already-but-not-yet-fully here. It takes Christlike humility, childlike faith, and quiet trust to follow Jesus, loving people as He loves, and doing as much good as we can, to the best of our ability, for the greater glory of God.
