Immanuel Lutheran Church Weekly Devotion

Advent Devotion - Sunday 2 December 2012

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    Psalm 25:4-5, 8-10, 14 --  ⁴ Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. ⁵ Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.
    ⁸ Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. ⁹ He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. ¹⁰ All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
    ¹⁴ The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes his covenant known to them.

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        I value my friends; they are near and dear to me. If you look at my Facebook page you may think that I have many friends. I may know many people and be acquainted with them, yet I would not call all of them my friends. My friends are a very select group, people that I care very much about. Some I have known for years, since childhood, others I have recently known. I have friends in Montana, Maryland, Missouri and Minnesota, as well as other states and lands. Our connections and relationship with each other have transcended time and distance.
        Yet how many of us would consider God or Jesus as a friend? Jesus or God offers us a friendship that is beyond our human understanding. God offers us steadfast love and faithfulness. To have God as a friend is to know that God is not fickle, God will not cast us aside. Yes, we have friends we highly value, but do they offer the faithfulness and love God offers us? Our friends may be by our side when the chips are down for us, but they have lives to live and they cannot be with us 24/7, the way God can. But to have a friend in God or Jesus does not discount our earthly friends. How can we know God’s love and faithfulness but through our friends who stand by us? When our friends care for us and are by our side we see the incarnational face of God through our friends  love and faithfulness. The psalmist is asking God to teach him divine truths and the path God will guide him upon. The eternal truth: God’s steadfast love and faithfulness given for us through His Son Jesus, who comes into our lives, our world. Jesus calls us to model this with those around us in our community, people we meet when our paths cross. If we want to experience this steadfast love and faithfulness of God, let us model this same steadfast love and faithfulness to not only our friends but all people who we meet in life. God’s steadfast love and faithfulness is to be shared with others, so we may know it ourselves.

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    We pray: Dear Lord, we long to have this friendship with you. Yet we are the ones who turn away. Forgive us, welcome us back to you, so we may experience your  faithfulness and  love for us. In Your Holy Name we pray.  Amen.