The Peace We Long For: Advent in Disorienting Times | Day 4

Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 124 and Romans 6:1-11

It’s not always easy to sing a song of ascent, as this psalm is described when we find ourselves in a season where “anger burns against us”, torrents sweep over us, or we haven’t escaped the hunter’s net. While praise for God’s deliverance from difficulty comes from a quiet or even broken and unsure voice, the strength isn’t reliant on us to produce. Even Psalm 124 reminds us in verse 4 of the waters that could engulf us, just as the Red Sea could have engulfed God’s people as they fled Egypt. Instead, they were made safe.

Sometimes the strength is in the remembering. There’s a phrase, “You’ve survived 100% of your worst days.”

When we look back on our struggles, there’s also the fact that we CAN look back. We can find the patterns where and how things came to pass, who was there for us, and what it may have looked like for us to seek God in those same seasons. Just as we look back for reassurance, in the season of Advent, we look forward in hope.

In Advent, we look forward to the peace to come. Even today’s passage in Romans seems to encourage us to look forward to the life we have ahead of us and let go of the things that held us from flourishing in the life we are called to live. What if we traded our New Year's resolutions for points of alignment?

What are the areas we are made to flourish in that can feed to help us better live out “on Earth as it is in Heaven”? What can we do so that the world may “know us by our fruits”?