So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:33
Here’s a poem from this Advent book I have been enjoying. It contains a powerful message that comes into view more clearly each time I read it.
If we want to get ready for Christmas, we must raise the bar. It starts with repentance, moves to renouncing our former relationship to possessions, and then reorients how we think and live from greediness to generosity.
“A Lament for What is Best”
How long Lord will You allow us to lower the bar?
How long will You permit us to reduce discipleship
down to this sticky syrup of mere conversion?
Our greedy hands withhold the broken bread and shed blood.
Our mouths are full of barbed wire. Our feet carry us
Always to the places of comfort and ease.
All the world enters our eyes upside down. But You
Oh Lord made the brain to turn it, to orient life toward
What is best. Deliver us from arrogant, unthinking certainty.
Save us from ignorant addiction to inalienable
rights and all of our piled-up offences and slights.
Make us to walk in the way of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Press our hands into the rich soil of creation and harvest
the Good News of His character grown in us on Earth
as it is in Heaven. May it be so.
John Ballenger in “A Lament for What is Best” in Not Yet Christmas: It’s Time for Advent by J.D. Walt (Franklin: Seedbed, 2014) 29.
Today’s verse and the poem together illustrate the whole new way of life celebrated at the Hillsong Church campus at which I worshipped this morning (Remember I am 18 hours ahead of Denver time). Hillsong has raised the bar of discipleship and God is working through them to help people see the world right side up.
Father in heaven, forgive me for lowering the bar. Reveal to me the thinking and actions that I must renounce and shape Your character in me by Your Holy Spirit for the glory of Jesus this Christmas. Amen.