Day 7: Exchange
And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.
Luke 2:9-10
It is no grim judgment like those prophets of old would bring, nor the conditional contracts recounted and reprised across the former kingdoms. It is a royal announcement like no other, with fanfare from the heavenly hosts! It was all joy, all exuberance, all welcome, all gladness, for it was a transmission for all people. Mere human words would fail the angel to communicate in human terms the miracle of the birth to which they were called. It was a new kind of birth. A birth no shepherd nor shah, prince nor potentate could predict, much less comprehend. It was a new kind of birth which would catalyze a wave of new births across the globe. Life would begin on earth anew. Indeed a new age of rebirth had arrived.
Words would fail the angel, not for fault of the angel, but because those kinds of words do not exist. Thus the glory of the Lord shone around him, and the host of angels appeared beside him, as if to somehow fill in the void of what human language could not intonate. How foreign but familiar this miracle feels! I recall my own salvation, my own miracle, when I at first heard the gloriously incomprehensible yet manifest call to faith in Christ and to His kingdom. That gladness welled up in my soul, almost too welcome to be received properly. The offer of forgiveness, peace with God, and the horribly imbalanced exchange of my pitiful rebellion for His blessing was as a pitcher of cool water for a young man in the throes of desert dehydration. Little could I comprehend how such a boon would appear there before me and the lasting effects of its graces, but I received it all the same.
As the decades have passed since my own new birth, I confess that spiritual life has most often become…ordinary. I know better, and am more accustomed now to the life of Spirit than the deadness prior to regeneration, for it cursed me only a relatively short while, being saved at a young age. My service becomes commonplace and tiring. I lose the wonder of my salvation. How I’m refreshed at Luke’s retelling of the angels! How the sweet words of their message would give shape to my own salvation experience, but especially how that glory of the Lord shining around them fills my mind with wonder at the mystery. I yearn to see that glory with my own eyes, which one day will be revealed to us for all eternity. Just the telling of it, the imagining of what it must have been, and is even presently shining forth in the courts of that Kingdom to which we have yet to immigrate, leads my heart home to the gladness of new life. In those few words from the angels, the joys of advent are restored in my heart, and I’m glad we have matched the rhythms of our calendar in a yearly march toward the coming of our Savior.
Application Questions
-What do you remember of your own salvation experience? Your thoughts, your emotions
-What have you found, over the course of your walk with Christ, most renews and revitalizes your energy for service and worship?
-Are these practices of renewal present currently in your life? If not, how might you set about to recover them?
