Dear West Family

I went on Twitter by mistake this week. It was by mistake and it was a big mistake. You see, I deleted my Twitter account a couple of years ago as I grew tired of all of the divisive rhetoric and the constant flow of cataclysmic news. I haven’t missed it at all, but I clicked through a news article that was speaking about the changes at Twitter since my fellow countryman and fellow Austin “resident” Elon Musk had taken over. The click took me to some Twitter feeds which led me to linger around for a while to try and get a feel for the new Twitter vibe.

It’s still horrible. Turns out people are still divided and the news is still cataclysmic. It seems to me to be a genuine fear amongst people that the world is getting worse, and the times are dark and difficult. I fully understand that fear, and see more than a few reasons for concern when studying the headlines myself. As I thought about it more and more, my soul became increasingly restless and my outlook increasingly bleak. Then I spent some time in a short devotional reading yesterday and a seemingly innocuous and borderline irrelevant detail slammed into my heart and mind. I am doing Advent readings to try and center my heart on the good news of the incarnation and my reading yesterday was from Luke 3.

There it says, 

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.  - Lk 3:1–2 (ESV)

That’s the kind of contextual setup text that we often ignore, but I was blown away at the truth it contains that is really helpful to our cultural moment (and indeed to every cultural moment.) Here are three things I took away from that text.

First, God is working even when the season seems dark and devoid of His work. This text shows the people of Israel under four layers of poor, and indeed extremely unjust, leadership. Caesar, Pilate, Herod and Caiaphas aren’t exactly poster boys of godly leadership. They are pretty much the opposite in fact.

This is so helpful because every generation thinks that their moment is the most severe and often superimpose that onto some sort of sense of a diminishing activity of God in the world. And yet we see God working His greatest plan in the midst of it all.

Second, and this is so disarming, God moves in ways that we really don’t expect. We see the context of the most powerful people in the most powerful places and expect God to bring about something awesome within those halls of power, and yet they simply set the backdrop for God’s real work, speaking to His people in the wilderness. Note that He didn’t speak to Caesar, Pilate, Herod or even the high priest Caiaphas. He spoke to John, a humble man living in the wilderness but seeking God’s Kingdom. Friends, maybe our hope and help shouldn’t be based solely on who we get into the highest halls of power, though they do matter and I promise that I know that. Maybe we are supposed to be the ones in the wilderness, seeking God’s Kingdom, determined to hear His voice over the siren songs of power and societal acceptance.

Third, God is interested in real people and their real lives. Don’t you love that the biblical narrative and God’s redemptive work in the world is rooted in the complexity of an actual lived history? Our actual lives are not too human, or too boring, or too bound in circumstance and routine for God to be powerfully present in the midst of them. The God of the heavens sticks His hands into the dirt of the lives that He made because He loves us, and He works in and indeed through the very ordinary, time and placeness of our everyday lives. What a thought.

Friends, the world is in a bit of a mess. I don’t think we need to deny that. And yet, it has always been that way and I believe it always will until Jesus comes to rule and reign over its re-creation. In the meanwhile though, He continues to work, and to move, and to save, and to redeem. Most often though it is the private and unseen life of people like John in the wilderness more than it is in the halls of highest power and the glitz and glamor of the elite spaces we sacrifice our lives to attain.

Enjoy the wilderness. You can hear God out there.

The music this week is one of my favorite Christmas songs and is from Lauren Daigle. I believe we are singing it in the service this week. Enjoy.

Chris Tomlin - Noel (Live) ft. Lauren Daigle

See you Sunday,
Ross