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Advent devotions 2008

DEC. 16 - GOD'S GOOD AND GROANING WORLD
By Keith Graber Miller, professor of Bible, religion and philosophy

SCRIPTURE: II Samuel 7:1-11, 16 (NRSV)
Scroll down for complete Scripture.

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DEVOTIONAL:
Over the last decade our family has had many opportunities for global travel and extended sojourns -- to the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Costa Rica, China and Cambodia with Goshen College’s Study-Service Term program; to Puerto Rico, my spouse's homeland, on sabbatical; and to Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, China and Vietnam for family reasons (visiting siblings, taking vacations and adopting our daughter). In each of these settings we've been struck by God's presence manifest in different ways: in the energetic worship of charismatic Christians in Latin America; in the cathedrals and rich iconographic traditions of Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe; in the marginal Christian communities of Asia, struggling to get a foothold in their home cultures; in many people seeking justice and peace through faith groups and non-governmental organizations.

In today’s passage from II Samuel, we see a foreshadowing of a theological message that comes to fuller fruition in Christian Scriptures: the reality that God is not bound to one holy place; God dwells everywhere -- ever tenting, always on the move -- in God's good and groaning world. When David offers to build the Lord a temple, God turns this offer on its head, noting instead that God will give David and Israel rest from their enemies and from their journey. God promises to be with David and his people wherever they go. Although the temple is later built, the trajectory has been set, foreshadowing the coming of Jesus and the sending of the Spirit: God is present throughout the world, in all nations and peoples, guiding and sustaining and transforming. Amen and amen.

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SCRIPTURE: II Samuel 7:1-11, 16 (NRSV)
Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, 'See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.' Nathan said to the king, 'Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.'

But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, 'Why have you not built me a house of cedar?' Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever.

Posted at 19:50 #