A Morning Snapshot
December 12, 2024 | Jim Angehr
An action photo coming at you for Advent this week!
For years, I've followed as my daily Bible reading guide the ESV Study Bible’s “Digging Deep into the Bible” plan, which takes me through the whole Bible every year, plus the Psalms, Isaiah, Luke, and Romans twice each. This reading regimen doesn’t particularly make accommodations for the Advent season, although it’s easy enough to find timely connections between the scheduled passages for a given day and the arrival of Jesus to our world.
Sometimes when I do my daily reading––always on my Supernote Nomad, of course––a passage of Scripture will strike me, and I’ll go straight into prayer journal mode.
Above is one such example! A couple of weeks ago, my ESV plan took me into Isaiah 32, and v. 17 caught my attention: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” Isaiah 32 is a prophetic chapter that includes both warning and also a look ahead to the reign of the messianic king (i.e., Jesus) who will finally restore all things.
For as much as I love my Supernote, however, it can’t do anything to improve my handwriting. So, let me write out what I prayed in my journal on 12/4: “Lord, I long for a world such as the one promised here. In this Advent season, grant me hope that there will be a world, in which righteousness dwells, to come.
“I am beleaguered, and even numbed, to the lack of shalom [Hewbrew for “peace”] in the world––and ungodliness, and sin. Grant me that more righteousness will tend toward more justice and quietness.
“A world kept in secure quiet! Only from you, O Lord; even so, come, O Emmanuel.”
This is the nub of it, that as the years go by, the promise of Advent stretches my faith more and more, because the unrest, strife, and pain all around us only ever seems to increase.
“Righteousness” can be a word that sounds scary to people, as it conjures images of religious hypocrites who are “holier than thou” and scornful of others. This is not who Jesus calls us to be! Consider instead that as we receive by faith Jesus, the righteous one, these are the promised effects of his righteousness, according to Isaiah 32:17: peace, quietness, and trust. Who doesn’t need more of that?