Advent 2021 Intro

Creation.  What comes to mind when this word is stated?  Perhaps images of our world the midst of a great expanse of space.  Perhaps forests and grassy plains are in view.  Waterfalls, mountains, oceans, and deserts.  Together they form the places where we live and the places where God has put us.

Creation will serve as our theme throughout this Advent season.  The Creation is God’s handiwork.  It is the result of the Creator’s design and purpose.  It is the expression of his giftedness.  Creation is what God has made.  Creation is what Jesus Christ came to save.  It is the Creation that the Holy Spirit is preparing already in us the location of God’s presence and final blessing when the Lord Jesus comes at the end of time.

Along the way we will focus on reclaiming language and ideas about God’s creation.  Christians have to navigate a hostile world on all fronts about how we should think and live as God’s Creatures.  Language such as ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ will not be used, for example, because these are words that shift the attention away from God as Creator and as creation as its own independent and sterile object with humanity as disconnected from it.
 
This devotion will also focus in on 6 key areas of Creation Theology: First, the Creation from Nothing.  Second, Creation before the rebellion of Man.  Third, Creation as it is now.  Fourth, God freeing the Creation.  Fifth, God restoring the Creation.  And finally, sixth, the New Creation.  In the middle, we will focus during the week of Thanksgiving on a special emphasis with mankind as stewards of all that God has made.

It is our prayer to God that this devotion will bless our understanding of the work of God as it relates to us His beloved creatures.  May you gaze upon the Creation as that which God loves.  And the proof of that love is that the only begotten Son of the Father, Jesus Christ, came into the Creation in time and space and became part of it.  The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the proof that God loves what he Made, desires to redeem it, and plans on dwelling with his Creation for all eternity.
 
Creation to New Creation is the story of the Scriptures centered upon Jesus Christ.  God’s ordering of the creation is what the 10 commandments teach us.  God’s Providence and Care is the lesson the Apostles’ Creed teaches us, the desire for the Lord to save and ransom the creation is what the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to ask God for.  The rejuvenation and the liberation of the Creation are what the Sacraments have sealed us with as we look to the New Creation.

Blessings as you digest this devotion in Christ’s name! Amen