Morning Devotion for the Season of Advent
November 29, 2021
Invitatory
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
Amen.
Our king and Savior now draws near; Come let us adore him.
Reading: II Peter 1:3-9
His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For anyone who lacks these things is short-sighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
When I was in graduate school, I attended almost every performance of the university’s Philharmonia orchestra. Before each concert, I would check out from the Music Library the full scores of all the scheduled pieces. With these in hand at the performance, I could follow on the page what the orchestra was playing on stage. And I did this for one reason: by reading the score, my eyes would help my ears hear musical lines that, otherwise, I would miss. For I realized many times that I tend not to notice violas or clarinets or flutes -- instruments that play interior lines.
I learned a lot by this practice. More than all else, the scores highlighted the beautiful complexity of orchestral music. Scanning multiple lines spread across the extra large pages on my lap -- turning them quickly as the music was played -- I never failed to marvel at the skills required to compose a symphony. No one line can simply stand alone. Each section of instruments is integrated into the whole. No notes are extraneous. They are set, in pitch and rhythm, in an exact alignment. And watching this in action was both humbling and inspiring. It made the experience all the more thrilling.
Whenever I read Biblical texts like that appointed from II Peter for today, I am delightfully reminded that faith is symphonic. It is comprised and supported by many elements of human experience and discernment that all work together in specific relation. Peter didn’t simply list components of the Christian life; he invites his readers to ponder a number of factors that he set in a particular series. And right away, the order is surprising. Faith is supported, he said, by goodness, and goodness by knowledge. This isn’t how we tend to think. For us, usually, knowledge is foundational, if not wholly exclusive. We assume that what can’t be known can’t be believed, or trusted, or even given plausibility: this is the conviction of our age.
But Peter places knowledge in the service of goodness. Goodness has priority. And goodness, in turn, is what makes faith persuasive. Peter puts these multiple traits in a defined order as a way to inform us that faith has a complex character. It isn’t reducible to any one, binary question that can be answered with a yes or a no. It’s not dependent on the issues we commonly argue about: whether God exists (by our lights), or whether the Incarnation can be rationally justified, or whether the persistence of evil nullifies God. Faith is played out as many different things contribute to it. It’s not a single star; it’s a constellation. Which makes faith interesting and worthy of much discussion. For all of us are a bit deaf to its many interior lines. But when we are alerted to them, faith becomes marvelous. It is music, far more than it is dogma, or rule, or authority. Peter offers us a glance at part of the score.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
