Advent Day 11
2 Chronicles 34:19
And when the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his clothes.
There is an important (and often overlooked) story about our ancestral people. 700 years or so after the people had built their own nation in the middle east, they had grown to forget the God who had called them out of Egypt. They had forgotten their purpose. They forgot who they were.
A young king (26 years old at the time of this story) had overseen a rehabilitation of the Kingdom, and they had found the book of the law. These are the books we call Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In those books he rediscovered the story of the people being restored and the purpose for their nation.
He was deeply grieved because he realized how miserably his people had failed.
What I think is so powerful about this is the way Josiah grieves personally for the failure of his own people group. He considered the sins and struggles of previous generations something he was personally responsible for.
In our own day we might try to locate parallels within our own nation, but we would be wrong. Our nation is not the country we live in, but the people of God. If we are to grieve over past failures, let them not be “American failures” but Church failures. Certainly in our own more recent history the church has failed to honor God because of the allure of flirting with other gods.
Let’s be willing to repent over these sins and struggles while we seek to reclaim an authentic church that has rediscovered the words of God.
Prayer
God, help us to be a people who is willing to place the church community above all other loyalties. Help us to be a people who is able to repent of our communities failures while we rediscover your word to us and carry it it into the future.
Today’s ADVENTure says
Check in on someone. Wish them a Merry Christmas!