Artwork:
The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds by Thomas Cole, (1834) is an oil on canvas painting over seventeen feet wide. Housed at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Cole’s vivid landscape shows heaven breaking into earth as the angelic announcement of Christ is made to awe-struck shepherds.

Advent Devotional

Have you noticed that angels often tell people not to be afraid? Scan through the Bible for mention of angels, and “fear not!” usually starts their conversations. And did you know that “fear not” is one of the most common commands in the Bible? Fear must plague us more than we care to admit.

Maybe it’s not unreasonable to fear an angel. How much more should we expect fear to be our default mode in getting close to God? After all, He is the one the angels declared to be “holy, holy, holy” and “the Lord God almighty.” If He’s a holy God who judges sin, shouldn’t we
have good reason to fear?

C.S. Lewis wrote that we want God to be something different from what He really is. Here’s how he put it. “An ‘impersonal God’—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord. . .that is quite another matter.”

So how do we move from fear to joy?

It’s the wonderful news that “a Savior” has been born. The good news embedded in the word “savior” is that we can be saved. The bad news is that we need to be saved. The gospel affirms both truths: We need to be saved and we can be saved. If we receive God’s wonderful gift of salvation, through repentance and faith, our fear turns to joy—for all eternity!

Prayer

Dear Savior,
Thank You for dying on the cross for sinners like me.
May these days of Advent draw me closer to You.
May it be that your love for me would melt all my fears
(of people, of pain, of circumstances, of the
future, of anything that looms larger than it should)
and may I rejoice
that You are my Messiah and Lord.