Tuesday Prayer: 44

This is my 44th 'Tuesday Prayer' post. Recently, the Church calender has started to celebrate Advent - we are in a new liturgical year - and I thought it would be worth sharing a rather powerful prayer from the Church of England, again. I love these words;

Saviour eternal,
life of the world unfailing,
light everlasting
and our true redemption.

Taking our humanity 
in your loving freedom,
you rescued our lost earth
and filled the world with joy.

By your first advent justify us,
by your second, set us free:
that when the great light dawns
and you come as judge of all,
we may be robed in immortality
and ready, Lord, to follow
in your footsteps blest, 
wherever they may lead.

I love these words. Whenever we look at Christ, at the Incarnation, we are caught in something of a paradox of time and space. God becoming man. A baby who is King. We look forward to Jesus' second coming - even as we remember his first, and look forward in anticipation of celebrating it. Advent is almost time travel - echoing our part in the divine drama as pilgrims in the now and not yet.

And in this not yet, in this time remember and anticipating the King, we are reminded of truths. That the world is lost - but is rescued by a baby. That we are joy-less, but this Jesus fills our world with joy. We look forward to the second coming, when Jesus comes as judge of all, but we do so by responding. The call of the Christian - robed in immortality - is to follow in Jesus' footsteps. To say and speak and live and pray and love as he did, pursuing the saviour eternal. That is what advent reminds me of, what this prayer reminds me of: the call of the Kingdom of God.

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Don't forget to check out the previous posts in the series, featuring quotes from Tom Wright, John Wimber, Richard Foster and Don Carson, the great J. C. Ryle and theologians Alister McGrath and James K. A. Smith. Since then, I've shared quotes from Justin Welby, E.M. Bounds, Vineyard Pastor Ken Wilson, C. S. Lewis,  Norwegian O'Hallesby, Paul Miller, John Piper. Recently, we've heard Matthew Henry, Charles Finney, Andrew Murray, Tim Chester, Vaughan Roberts, Oliver O'Donovan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and John Bunyan. Then we got rather retro, with quotes from Church Fathers John Chrysostom and Tertullian, before returning to more recent thinkers with Rowan Williams, Mike Reeves and Peter Jackson and Chris Wright and Andrew Case, R. C. Sproul, and (representing a slight change of tack) the Westminster Confession. Recently we considered Karl Barth, and Donald Macleod, Mary Prokes,  J. C. Ryle (again!), Andrew Murray,  Martyn Lloyd Jones, Hudson Taylor, recently about Ffald-y-Brenin,  some of my own words, and my friend Nick Parish, Joyce Huggett. Most recently I've shared a prayer of remembrance from the C of E, and some of the words of Paul.