Friday, December 1, 2017

Advent 1

The Word 

This is the first of a series of Advent meditations, for my family and anyone who wants to follow along. It is intended to help keep our focus on the Reason for the Season, and lead up to the themes of our Christmas services this year.




1. The Word of God

This name is about as basic as a name can be: a name is a word for something and our Saviour is called The Word. This encompasses every other word in existence, in every language, and all of the essence of language, and thus the totality of discourse, all reasoned communication (for that is what words are for, smut and gibberish notwithstanding), all expressed thoughts, all formulated propositions, and all delineated conclusions. Our Lord is all of those things, and all of those things proceed from His essence if they have any meaning at all. So if something is named or discussed or described or proposed or concluded, it can only happen because Jesus is named, revealed, described, presented and finished as our Lord. That is quite remarkable to consider. If words were gibberish, if words were random, if words had no fixed meanings, if words were not strung together in some reasonable and knowable order, we could not understand one another's thoughts (granted, even with words we sometimes cannot) or find meaningful ways of acting together. My “Ulka bulunga ti” could mean “Let's go have ice cream,” but you would never know. But because our Lord is The Word, we have meaning and order and possibilities for communication.

When God speaks, He speaks through Jesus' essence, and that essence came to earth Incarnate, to us, to give meaning to our lives and discourse. Blessed is The Word.

Genesis 1: 3ff
John 1:1 ff
Revelation 19: 11- 16



5 comments:

  1. Thank you for your Advent meditations, for sharing them here. They have always been edifying to me so I'm looking forward to what you prepare this year.

    My thoughts on The Word
    Also- the world came into being by the Word that God spoke "Let there be light!"
    " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
    All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."

    We communicate with words and have language as you described above and it is a *proof* that we are created in the image of God and that human life is sacred and precious, not just another form of animal life. No other creatures have this word.

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    1. And another- DNA is the longest "word" with all the letters in the perfect order for life. And yet also has limitless varieties in the messages it contains for every single form of life on earth.

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    2. P.S. DNA is 13.5 billion letters long!

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  2. hmm, the comment I wrote for this didn't post either, but Thank you, Pam, for your thoughtful comments.

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  3. Such interesting thoughts, both you, @Sarah Marie, & @Clayvessel! Thank you! :D

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