Day 276: Advent in the First Churches: GALATIA

 DAY 276

                              Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic                     

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

pastorrobert@paxpres.org

Week Forty    Tuesday 15 December 2020

Advent in the First Churches: Galatia

Seven churches – seven letters – seven days.

Galatians 4:4-7

“But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father,.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child, and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”

Galatians is the only one of the Pauline epistles that does not specifically reference the second coming of Christ, and yet it articulates a concept regarding the first that is also equally applicable to the second, what the King James Version refers to in the opening verse above as “the fullness of time.”  This is ‘chronos’ time, linear time that stretches throughout human history. It is where all that happens is placed. It is important because the first advent of the Creator of everything was in linear, actual time, not in the timelessness of religious mythology.

When Ruth and I felt our time at a new church development we had planted was coming to a close, we couldn’t figure out why we didn’t sense it was yet time to leave. Only after a friend of many years resigned as a pastor and contacted me about putting my name in for interim did we understand. A church where we had been involved annually in guest ministry for over 15 years, it was a natural fit, and we moved back to Alaska to serve there, when the time had fully come.

Fulness of time – the Greek word means to be full, filled, or complete or completed. In the economy of God there is never such a thing as anything the Triune God does being too early or too late. His sense of scheduling is flawless. It was that way with the first advent of Christ, and it will be that way with the second advent of Christ. In the interim, it is also that way with all that pertains to us.

Reflective question: When you reflect on God’s flawless sense of timing regarding the both advents of Christ, where do you need to trust that His timing in your life is perfect as well?

Reflective hymn: “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” – Edmund Sears (1810-1876)

Verse four – focuses on the second advent or coming

For lo, the days are hast’ning on, by prophets seen of old,

When with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold,

When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.