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Wednesday,
November 28, 2007
First Week of Advent - Year A
This Week's
Theme:
"The Far Gone Night"
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Romans 13:11-14 (ESV)
11 Besides this you know the time, that the hour
has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer
to us now than when we first believed.
12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then
let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of
light.
13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies
and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not
in quarreling and jealousy.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision
for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Used by permission. All rights reserved. Text provided by the
Crossway
Bibles Web Service
Fourthly, in regard of order in degree: faith is first, and before
all adversities and troubles, and is the beginning of life. (Heb
11) But hope follows after, and springs up in trouble. (Rom 5)
Fifthly, by reason of the contrariety:
faith fights against errors and heresies; it proves and judges
spirits and doctrines. But hope strives against troubles and
vexations, and among the evil it expects good.
Faith in divinity, is the wisdom
and providence, and belongs to the doctrine. But hope is the
courage and joyfulness in divinity, and pertains to admonition.
Faith is the dialectica, for it is altogether prudence
and wisdom; hope is the rhetorica, an elevation of the
heart and mind. As wisdom without courage is futile, even so
faith without hope is nothing worth; for hope endures and overcomes
misfortune and evil. And as a joyous valor without understanding
is but rashness, so hope without faith is spiritual presumption.
—Martin Luther,
Table Talk
Pulling
It Together
Hope
gives faith a reason to exercise. Why would one wake up and begin
the day in darkness without hope of imminent daylight? Would
a sane person keep struggling against her troubles without embracing
some hope? In a world continually bent on evil (Gen 6:5), why
would anyone offer it fairness and goodness? Life is stricken
with sin and wrongdoing so why would anyone have the temerity
to try to be a good person?
There are only two answers: either
ignorant stubbornness or hope. But from where does a rational
and enduring hope arise? "Hope is built on nothing less"
than what Jesus did and provides. This is why the night is already
far gone and the light dawns on the horizon of our hearts. Even
"when darkness seems to hide [God's] face, [one may] rest
on His unchanging grace." That rest offers the hope of a
new day—a new life.
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