Advent Daily Devotional - Day 24
Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.
My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’
(John 14:23)
I hope you've enjoyed our Advent Devotionals as much as I have. I’ve loved hearing from different people in our community, and the fresh and powerful insights each has brought. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been involved in the writing and publishing of all the blogs.
As we come to the end of the series, with Christmas Day tomorrow, I want to bring one final reflection on Advent. Our word ‘advent’ comes from the Latin word adventus, which means ‘coming' or ‘arrival'. Although we usually think of Advent in terms of the first coming of Jesus, Christian thinkers have often reflected on three different ‘comings’ of Jesus. One person who did this was Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 - 1153), a major leader of the Cistercian Order of monks. He commented that:
We know that the coming of the Lord is threefold…
The first coming was in flesh and weakness,
the middle coming is in spirit and power,
and the final coming will be in glory and majesty.
The middle coming is our daily walk with Jesus. St. Bernard comments that:
This middlecoming is like a road that leads from the first coming to the last.
At the first, Christ was our redemption; at the last, he will become manifest as our life;
but in this middle way, he is our rest and our consolation.
We see this middle coming reflected in the promise of Jesus at the start of this devotional, that if we love Jesus then He and the Father will come and make their home with us. What an amazing promise. Not just that God came to us 2,000 years ago through the birth of Jesus, or that He will come to us again when Jesus returns and establishes a new heaven and a new earth, but that He comes to us every day through the presence of His Spirit living in us and at work in us and through us.
As we move beyond Christmas Day, and our focus inevitably moves away from Jesus’ birth and onto all that 2025 is going to hold, let us continue to live in the good of His first coming, look forward to everything being put right at His second coming, and day by day enjoy His middle coming as He makes His home with us.
Question….
What might you do in 2025 to better recognise Jesus making His home with you every day? Ideas could include:
Starting a Bible reading plan to engage with God through His word every day
Making space every day to be alone with God and have a conversation with Him
Daily inviting the Holy Spirit to come and fill you with God’s presence
Today's devotional was written by Simon Benham.