Though Your Sins Be As Scarlet: Advent Daybook, 2
Happy New Year, Church! I’m so grateful to have you joining me for the prayerful expectation of Advent and the festive celebration of Christmas! For the first few days, I’ve included a “how-to” guide at the bottom of each post just to help you get oriented to the format we’re using each day. Please feel free to reach out with your questions!
And now, take a few deep breaths, settle your body, mind, and heart into a quiet space and let’s begin with prayer.
Opening prayer: Heavenly Father, make me more like Jesus and more like the true self you’ve created as I savor your loving presence today. Please guide my thoughts and impressions by your Holy Spirit. Amen.
Look: Escape, 2017, Nicolas Sanchez - Source
Listen: Winterfire, Hymns from Nineveh - Lyrics | Spotify | YouTube
Read: Psalm 7; Isaiah 1:10–20; 1 Thessalonians 1:1–10; Luke 20:1–8
Excerpts:
“God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day.”
*
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.
Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: If your sins are like scarlet, will they become like snow? If they are red like crimson, will they become like wool?”
*
“For they report about us what kind of welcome we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.”
—Psalm 7:11; Isaiah 1:16-18; 1 Thessalonians 1:9b-10
Pray: On Mondays during Advent, we'll practice a contemplative prayer method called "Centering Prayer."
Today's prayer word comes from Isaiah: "Clean." This word will help call you back to interior silence when distractions arise.
Set your alarm for whatever time you have available (somewhere between 5 to 20 minutes).
Sit comfortably with your eyes closed as a sign of letting go of the world around you and making yourself available to God.
Introduce your word gently into your mind. As thoughts or other distractions arise, call to mind your word (always gently) and let it return you to interior silence. Remain here, open to God, until your alarm draws you from prayer.
When your alarm alerts you, begin to withdraw from prayer. Thank God for the time spent in prayer, and let your mind, spirit, and body reacclimate to your surroundings.
Trust that God has heard your prayer, and go forward into your day with peace.
Do: Today, each time you use water to wash your hands, dishes, or laundry, simply and thankfully repeat the word from your centering prayer: "Clean."
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean … though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” (Is. 1:16a & 18b)
*Sunday Scripture readings are taken from Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary. Daily Scripture readings are taken from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and include both Morning and Evening Psalms (Year 1).
Why Advent?
Advent is a season of invitation for the feast that is coming. Practicing Advent for over a decade has formed me spiritually, emotionally, and relationally in ways that are hard to quantify. It’s a little bit of growth year after year that adds up to a quieter soul and a sturdier hope. Each year, the prophets, psalm singers, and gospel writers invite me to see with a clearer lens the mystery of God’s miraculous arrival. The same mystery shapes our entire lives, the waiting for Christ’s next and final arrival. The arrival that we expect is the one that will never end with another goodbye. Oh, mysterious hope!
While Advent trains me to embrace mystery, it also requires me not to look away from the inherent tension of acknowledging that, yes, all shall be well, and all is not yet well. Every year, I sort of hope the prophets' words will be cozier. Why must there be so much talk about God’s justice wiping out man’s evil? Why so many flaming arrows and toppling earth?
The reality of arrival is not a cozy scene, but a cosmic, unstoppable disruption of the kingdom of men by the reigning God and His Son, Jesus. Advent is the invitation to walk the pathway of this eternal kingdom. The reign of Christ that’s already here, but not yet fully arrived shines the light for us as we walk. We live in this stretched out parentheses and Advent kindly welcomes our weary souls to contemplate the visible reality of our lives and the world in contrast to the invisible reality of the Christ who came, is with us now, and will most assuredly come again.
In the spirit of Advent’s invitation, I welcome you to walk through the days - one by one - quietly, slowly, and contemplatively. If this all sounds impractically holy, I assure you the best sort of contemplation is what happens when we carry a quiet heart through all the noisy celebrations or the sorrowful absences of December.
How to enjoy Advent Daybook posts: Look, Listen, Read, Pray, & Do
Each day of Advent (November 27 - December 24) I’ll share a devotional post that includes a work of art, a song, daily Scripture passages, a short prayer, and a simple action to help you practice the waiting days of Advent.
Look
Some might call this devotional practice of visual contemplation Visio Divina or a divine looking. It’s not the actual work of art that is divine, but the Holy Spirit’s invitation to encounter Christ through nonverbal reflection. Throughout the year I collect digital images that I think will enhance the Scriptural themes of Advent. You’ll notice that some of the images evoke traditional Christmas scenes while others seem to have nothing to do with the holiday season at all. The images rotate through classic and contemporary art of all media. Each week I include an image (usually a photograph) from news headlines of the year. My hope is that the Scripture passages for each day orient the visual art selection and sometimes, honestly, that’s a difficult task. The prophets don’t make cozy, holiday scenes a priority in their descriptive language!
Listen
December is prime time for music lovers! One of my earliest concerns about practicing a slow entry into the Christmas feast was that I’d miss all of the beautiful carols and Christmas songs I’d been singing at the top of my lungs since childhood. And, it’s true - I do miss singing along with most of the world (although, I’ve come to appreciate the store soundtracks as a perk of shopping in December!) What I didn’t know until I’d lived Advent for a few years is that I’d grow the same attachment to the old hymns and carols of Advent.
While I could never get tired of the quintessential Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” there are so many more to enjoy. The theologically rich, melodically beautiful lyrics of Advent have formed me almost as much as the Scripture we soak in each year. Thankfully, as the Church has become increasingly reacquainted with the historic liturgical calendar, there’s been a lovely renaissance of new and retuned music allowing us to raise our voices every season.
Most of the songs I share each day are contemporary versions of old classics or new tunes written for Advent, but each week I try to mix in a choral or traditional arrangement. I try to select quality recordings and include a Spotify, YouTube, and when available, a Bandcamp version for your convenience. Since the music is chosen to enhance the visual art, my family chooses to play the music as a backdrop for contemplating the image. You might choose to do each separately. I also include a link to the lyrics for each song so you can sing along if you’d like!
Read
Oh my goodness, I love the lectionary. I’ve always been intrigued by the interweaving of the Old and New Testaments for the beauty of the various literary rhythms as well as the deep satisfaction of experiencing the living, breathing word of God that looks backward and forward at the same time. It’s so rich.
If you don’t do anything else with the posts, read the Scripture passages. I include a link for the complete lectionary passages each day and then excerpt the portions that particularly spoke to me as I was preparing the post. This year I’ve switched to the New Revised Standard Version most often, but if you click through the link to the Biblegateway page, you can adjust the version to your preference. Sunday Scripture readings are taken from Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary. Daily Scripture readings are taken from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and include both Morning and Evening Psalms (Year 1).
This year, I’ll be starting the “O Antiphons” (an ancient liturgy that is the root of the beloved “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” hymn) on December 19. The Scripture portion of each post will focus on one of the O Antiphons and will help us center ourselves in worship and adoration in the final week of Advent. We continue to be inspired by Malcolm Guite’s sonnets and a prayer service our church holds during this week. I look forward to sharing the beauty here with you, too.
Pray
Each week the prayers are formed around the Sunday collect (a prayer of collected words said by the collected congregation in Sunday worship). While you could pray directly from the daily Scripture (especially the Psalms) or the hymn lyrics, I include a guided prayer for each day. Once a week, I invite you to a form of intercessory prayer termed “Prayers of the People” in the Book of Common Prayer. This allows us to set aside at least one day to remember each sphere of our world with specific prayer.
Do
The spiritual practice of contemplation, at its best, moves from reflective stillness to thoughtful action. We were made by a Creator to love Him, our neighbors, and ourselves with heart, mind, soul, and strength. I’m delighted to invite you to join me in simple, daily actions to demonstrate God’s love to our neighbors, ourselves, and the world. Some of the activities will feel familiar to the traditional customs of Christmas time, and some will feel new and counterintuitive. It’s all good.
If you enjoy what I’ve been curating and creating here, please invite your friends to subscribe to a Daybook membership or to purchase their own one-time digital download. The Daybook devotional posts provide a beautiful experience to be able to share and talk about together.
As always, please feel free to email me your questions.
Thank you for keeping me company during these prayerful, expectant days. May we be reminded in our deepest hearts that we do not wait without hope!
Peace,
Tamara
p.s., Whether your friend joins us as a Daybook member to receive daily meditations in their inbox or purchases a one-time digital download of all 29 meditations, they’ll be able to jump in at any time while having access to previous posts from this year!