Thought for 6 December

 Hebrews 1:1-2

Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets.

  But now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.  God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he made the universe and everything in it.

The evolution of technology has meant there are many ways of communicating in this day and age.  Even with my advancing years, I have email, messenger, what’s app and facebook and I believe there’s also Instagram and linked in (don’t know too much about the last two).

As with all things that are man-made, there are flaws in these mediums of communication.  I have had folks contacting me saying they had emailed me and I genuinely had no knowledge of their message.  On checking, I discovered that my email provider had, for some reason unbeknown to me, directed this message to my ‘spam folder’ instead of directing it to my inbox.  I have also failed to notice some messages due to the amount of advertising stuff finding its way into my inbox.  Messenger is an application where I tend to get stuff rather than send stuff.  If anyone tries to contact the church via the website, that message finds its way to me or one of the other office bearers.  The latest one I received was last Saturday with a lady saying she would be unable to speak at the Guild on Monday due to having a chest infection.  It left me with a problem rather than a solution but at least, she let me know.  Facebook is something I find myself looking at several times each day and there’s some terrific information there about specific areas of interest.  It also lets you buy and sell things and I’ve heard that this feature works quite well.  I have also seen stories/items that have shocked me a bit and I’ve shared these stories among friends just to find out later that the information is wrong/inaccurate or out of date.  It also offers me a range of groups to join that are totally unrelated to my own interests.

It’s interesting that in today’s reading, we learn that God tried in different ways and with different men to communicate his will to mankind with different degrees of success depending on how mankind received and acted upon these messages.  With Jesus, God’s word was made perfect in how Jesus lived and died.  God has given us all we need and the challenge for all Christians is how we share this good news with those who have no knowledge of it.  The writer also describes the time after the resurrection of being the last days, reminding us that one day, the Lord will return and every knee will bow and recognise him as such.

I spoke at church some time ago about the vastness of this world and the difficulty of taking in just how much of this world is covered by seas and how little we know about the life and resources that lie beneath the waves.  Today’s verses tell us it was not only this world in which we live that was created by God, it was the whole universe.  If we find it hard to take in the vastness of the earth, where does that leave us when we consider the vastness of the universe, a universe made by the same God who made the earth?

The time of advent is a time of waiting, of waiting for the promised Messiah to be born and in our case, waiting for that day when we can remember and celebrate his birth.  Somewhat ironically, after all the criticism of facebook, I discovered the following post from an American preacher I follow and felt it was worth sharing: ‘Biblically, waiting is not just something we have to do until we get what we want.  Waiting is part of the process of becoming what God wants us to be.’

Prayer – Heavenly Father, we thank you that you created this universe, within which, our world is a tiny part.  How can our limited intellect take all this in when we cannot even make one grain of sand? We thank you for the message of salvation and grace that you communicate to us through the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man. We thank you that all who believe in his name will not be condemned but have everlasting life. We will sing of your love forever, our loving Saviour and gracious Lord.  Amen