“Say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you.” And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unplug the ears of the deaf. The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will sing for joy! Springs will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will water the wasteland.” Isaiah 35:4-6 NLT
As I approach Christmas in the fourth week of Advent and reflect on the fertile soil of the heart, I am challenged by the truth that it is only when I truly hear and understand God’s word, that I will be able to produce “a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted.” The words of one of my favourite carol came to mind:
So give your heart to Jesus,
You’ll discover when you do,
It’s Christmas, really Christmas for you.”
I need to “fertilize” the soil of my heart in the season of Advent to live a fruitful and not fruitless life in the new year. The season of Advent in the past three years have been most meaningful and fruitful. In late 2017 I first discovered the lived experience of the truth of the above passage from Isaiah. It was a time when I was “lame” - confined to a wheelchair as I was having severe backache while I was visiting my daughters in London. On my flight to London from Singapore, I had to spend 10 hours in the wheelchair in Amsterdam airport waiting for my connecting flight. My wife and I had to abandon our plans to go on a sight seeing day tour in Amsterdam. But it turned out to be a fruitful time as it gave me time to write the last chapters of my book, Living With Our Shepherd of Love. It felt like “the lame will leap like a deer!”
Just before Advent 2019, my ENT surgeon “sentenced” me not to speak for two weeks to rest my vocal cords. This provided me with the experience that “those who cannot speak will sing for joy!” I empathised with Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, to prepare for a new birth - the gestation period for my book “Living In God’s Loving Embrace” - my reflection on the Beatitudes.
In this last week of Advent, I am drawn to reflect on the be-attitudes of mercy and perseverance - to bear the fruit of forgiveness and to recognize the sin of sloth which leads to indifference and keeps us from the joy of our salvation. Jesus Christ came to show us what a life that is fully human and fully divine is like so that heaven can come on earth. Heaven is more than a place we go to when we die - it is a state of being that begins with our life here on earth. Our attitudes and actions, according to Richard Rohr, determines whether we are in heaven or hell:
“It’s Heaven all the way to Heaven and it’s Hell all the way to Hell. We are in Heaven now by falling, by letting go, and by trusting and surrendering to this deeper, broader and better reality that is readily available to us. We’re in Hell now by wrapping ourselves around our hurts, by over identifying with and attaching ourselves to our fears, so much so that they become our very identity. Any chosen state of victimhood is an utter dead end. Once you make that your narrative, it never stops gathering evidence about how you have been wronged by life, by others and even by God.”
Jesus came to change the negative narrative of our lives with the promise that goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives for He is our Shepherd of Love. Christmas is more than the celebration of the birth of Christ - it is God’s invitation to follow Christ in the adventure to bring heaven to earth. Let us be God’s vaccine of contagious love in the pandemic of fear infecting the world. Let us share the good news that we have been set free from the slavery of living under the rule of law. We are to dwell in the house of the Lord forever - living as citizens of heaven here on earth under the reign of the Prince of Peace as we sing:
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! the herald angels sing:
"Glory to the newborn King!"
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