First Week of Advent: Re-Reading.

 Jesus stood up and Read… (Luke 4:16)

Since my back operation, my fire pit mornings have been spent re-reading texts that impacted me during my college and seminary days. I suppose it’s sentimental—as one might visit their childhood home; I have a desire to visit memorable texts of my youth. I wonder what I will think some fifty years after my first read. This morning, I began a slow re-reading of Letters and Papers from Prison. It was my first encounter with the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It mesmerized me then. Would it still?

It’s not as if I haven’t read it sense. It has always been with me. I just haven’t read it slowly from beginning to end to experience again how those haunting phrases sneak up on you, like “religionless Christianity” and “World come of Age” and “Christ for others” and “Who is Christ for us today?”

The phrases hit me different 50 years or more later—not the surprise they were then. However, they are more complex and mysterious to me today than they were then. The closer we get to something or someone the more mysterious and wondrous they are. That’s true of truth—of all things real. Like creation, for example, the more science discovers about the universe the more mysterious and wondrous it becomes. The closer I come to the Creator, the more mysterious and wondrous God becomes. The more I come to know Linda, the more complex and mysterious she becomes to me.

I suppose that’s what makes classics classic—they reward re-reading. That’s what Advent, Christmas, Christmastide, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost and Ascension invite us to do—to read again the story of God’s saving deeds. The more we know of the Gospel Story the more wondrous it becomes to us.

Readings for the First Week of Advent: Hope.

Monday:       Genesis 1:1-5        &  John 1:1-5

Tuesday:       Genesis 1:26-27   &  Colossians 1:15-17

Wednesday: Genesis 3:15         &  Romans 16:20

Thursday:     Genesis 9:12-16   &  Romans 8:18-25

Friday:           Genesis 12:1-3     &  Matthew 1:1, Romans 4:18

Saturday:      Jeremiah 17:13-14 &Romans 15:12-13