This is the third week of Advent, the Christian season of preparation for Christmas. We’re looking at some of the traditional themes of the season. This week: Hope and Joy.
Today’s scripture: Psalm 126 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (Ben Lamb):
As a child, my parents had a garden in the back yard. Each year, they enlarged it more and more until it seemed like a plantation to my young eyes. I remember “getting” to help plant the seeds. We even had a ritual of all the necessary steps, which included me dreaming about a do-it-yourself cornucopia.
When it came time to perform the actual planting, though, that’s when I was, um, less than enthusiastic. I mean, how much fun is it to take a spade and break up hard clods of dirt? Exactly how exciting is it to fiddle around with a hoe and take great pains to make sure a row is super-straight and at exactly the correct depth? Who wants to crawl around, or bend over, and ever-so carefully plant just the right number of seeds at precisely the right distances?
But, when it was time to start watching the plants grow, I felt sort of happy that I’d had a chance to be a part of the process; I could see results! Soon, it was kind of fun to start watering the little soil-bound critters.
The best part was when it was time to harvest something. Finally, the hard work that I’d put into the gardening process seemed worth the effort (except for the Brussels sprouts!) As I picked, pulled or cut something and put it into a basket, I was working hard again; but the happiness factor was higher than it had been when I was merely parking a flat seed into dry dirt and not seeing instant results.
As I go through life, I often have to find encouragement in the fact that what I am doing at a particular moment is not what I’d actually prefer to do, but that the reason I’m doing it is to enjoy the end results. I’m planting seeds, and the harvest — though it may be far off in the future — will be worth the work.
Thought for the day: Hope can be the fuel that propels us to the end.
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.