The daily lectionary reading for today

The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) daily reading from the Old Testament for December 11 is Genesis 15:1-18.  It is the story of God’s covenant with Abram.  In it God pledges two things to Abram: Abram will have descendants as innumerable as the stars; and, his descendants will occupy Canaan from Egypt to the Euphrates river.

One of the extraordinary aspects of this covenant is that one would expect a deity making such an agreement with a human to grant them possession of land would result in the deity steamrolling the current occupants and bringing about the promise rather quickly and easily.

This is not so with God and Abram.  God speaks of setbacks.  God foretells in general terms the enslavement in Egypt and the fact that there will be difficulties in the work of Abram’s descendants to claim the land for their own.  The history bears out the fact that, at times, the taking of the Land of the Promise was a labor that took two steps forward, then one step back over the course of years.

It is a reminder to us of the Advent promise:

As our nights grow longer and our days grow short,

we look on these earthly signs--light and green branches--

and remember God's promise to our world:

Christ, our Light and our Hope, will come.

While some images of Christ’s coming have that event taking place “in the twinkling of an eye,” there are other metaphors that indicate that the timeline will be different.  God’s promise may be fulfilled over time, and in some ways that we don’t recognize until the entire thing has been realized.

As was the cased with the Advent of Jesus in Bethlehem, it may well be that our preconceptions about Christ’s return and the establishment of the true reign of God may look nothing like we anticipate.

That does not make the fulfillment of the promise incomplete.  Or invalid.  Or wrong.

Christ, our Light and Hope, will come.