Psalm 51:10  Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

The Hebrew word that David uses for "create," bara, always has God as its subject. We today might say an artist or musician "created" something, but the Hebrews didn't speak that way. God alone can bara. And that reveals a vital truth: there's only one way to get a clean heart and a renewed spirit. It's not by praying, fasting or confessing. None of that will somehow magically cause a new heart or right spirit to sprout within us. God renews us by this Son and Spirit. He alone gives us a new genesis, a fresh start.

That's helpful to remember in Advent. Should we pray? Yes. Fast? If we wish. Confess? Of course. But we don't self-create new hearts or autogenerate right spirits. The Maker of heaven and earth, our dear Father, does that for us because he positively delights in filling us to overflowing with his gracious gifts in Jesus Christ.
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Luke 1:45  And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.

It was almost as much a miracle that Mary believed that she would conceive as was the conception a miracle itself. Virginity and baby-making are mutually exclusive categories. We know this. Mary knew this. So, rightly does her relative Elizabeth exclaim, "Blessed is she who believed." And therefore, is the dead giveaway as to how Mary believed: she received the blessed gift of faith. Belief isn't some latent power we stir up within us; it is trust given to us by the Holy Spirit. "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Mary said, "Let it be to me according to your word" by that same Spirit's power (Luke 1:38). And so we do. The Son conceived in her is "born in us today," that is, takes up residence in our hearts, by faith conceived through the blessed work of the Spirit.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Jeremiah 17:5,7  Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength....Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.

Jeremiah paints a vivid picture of contrast between the man-truster and the God-truster. If those are real words. To trust in humanity is to be "like a shrub in the desert" of an uninhabited salt waste (17:6). A dismal existence, indeed. To trust in the Lord, however, is to be "like a tree planted by water," which keeps green leaves and sprouts fruit even in drought (17:8). And notice: there is no third option. We trust in God or we trust in humanity; we lean on heaven or we lean on earth.

Strictly speaking, there are no unbelievers; we all believe in something or someone. Our heavenly Father calls us to trust him, for he is trustworthy, gracious, merciful, perfect - everything humanity is not. Planted in the baptismal water of Christ, enlivened by him, we are blessed and fruitful, for we are joined to him who is Life itself.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

Genesis 12:3   I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
 

Was this a great big joke? There was Abram, seventy-five years old, and Sarai, ten years his junior. Two old folks, God tells this couple, who haven't filled a single crib, that their descendants will fill an entire nation. And as if that wasn't humorous enough, he added that through one of their offspring, the whole world would be blessed. A quarter-century later, when Sarah was ready to change the diapers of her son, she named him, most fittingly, "Laughter," or as we know him, "Isaac."

God has this tendency, at crucial moments in history, to center our hopes on an unlikely birth of an unlikely child from an unlikely mother. Isaac from Sarah. Samuel from Hannah. And Jesus from Mary. All these boys were blessings in their own way, but Jesus is divine blessing incarnate - born for us and in us to fill us with joyous laughter.

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Genesis 1:28:  And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
 

When God blesses, he's not treating people like they just sneezed. Nor is he shrugging his shoulders, as if to say, "Well, I really hope things work out for you." A blessing is not a wish; it's a divine word that actually does things. Accomplishes reality. All the verbs of this verse - being fruitful, multiplying, filling, etc. - will not be human trophies but divine gifts. Solely by His word of blessing do these things happen.

To hear the Father's word in Jesus is to be blanketed with blessings. His word of blood-bought pardon conceives faith in us. His word of resurrection life sparks new life in us. Like rain upon droughted soil, his powerful words fall into our weary lives, bringing a harvest of hope and joy.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). 

When the world would not take notice, God then dropped His very best and most personal Handkerchief—His own Son. This was the One who carried the very fragrance of God Himself. This Handkerchief was marked by His love and holiness. This was the One that God dropped in the hopes that finally He would catch the attention of the one He loved. Jesus expressed this hope in one of His parables, shortly before His crucifixion: 

“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (Matthew 21: 33-40). 

When finally this pure and clean Handkerchief of God had been stained with blood, they would lay Him in a grave. Wrapping Him in linens, ironically, they would place over His face a “handkerchief” or a “napkin.” When He arose, we are told: 

 “Simon Peter arrived after him, entered the tomb, observed the linen cloths lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head not lying with the linen cloths but separate, neatly folded by itself” (John 20: 6-7).

I have always found it curious and humorous to think of Jesus rising up through the grave cloths and then neatly folding the face cloth to the side as if to make a little statement there in the tomb: “TA-DA!” 

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Revelation 21:1-4 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

What does a “saint” look like to you? What would be the words that you would use to describe one? When I ask that question to various classes, the responses I get back often include words like “holy,” “good,” “Christ like,” “God-fearing.” You get the idea. All good answers. The Greek word for saint, hagios, refers to “separate from common condition and use; pure; righteous.”

Those are helpful definitions, but I especially like the one that Frederick Buechner wrote: “In His holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called Saints” (2004, p. 352). 

 What a marvelous picture of those saints God places in our lives. Add this thought to your pondering as well: 

 “God, the shy and proper lover whose heart has been stolen away by the world, drops a handkerchief in the pure, naïve hope that the world, that someone, will notice and pick it up and give it back and in so doing notice God and fall madly in love with God and talk with God, laugh with God, cry with God, even fight with God and fall asleep in His embrace” (Buechner, 1993.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,