Luke 8: Reflections & Responses
The times you cannot shake.
The times you can’t explain away as good luck, good choice, good work, or “good golly, that was a close one.”
The times that will not leave you.
To call them “miracle” might require a response beyond reasonable living.
(How to get up, get dressed, and go to school or work remembering such wonders?)
How has God shown you that his church is your family? Precisely when? How has that mattered?
When did you cry out that he heard you, and you knew in your gut that he’d heard?
Where were you when he revealed his divinity, and you even-just-for-a-moment fully believed?
When did you feel abjectly delivered? From what? And into what next?
In what ways have you gone out into solitary places, bent on self-destruction, and landed “sitting at Jesus’ feet,” sane and safe?
“Dear God, instill in us faith enough to walk through Luke 8 this Advent and believe in your wondrous ways. Help us each ask how we dare call our own life a catalog of miracles. Help us each ask how we dare not. Help. Thank you. Amen.”
This year’s Advent writing contributors dared to ask.
What can we glean from one another’s illustrations of wonder? We hope these reflections from your brothers and sisters tell you convincing tales of God’s present-day power—power to build us a family centered on him, to move us to truer belief, to rescue us from storms, to heal us, to deliver us, to call us to sit at his feet, and to inspire us to celebrate sacred stories with new eyes, in these right-now-holy days of Advent 2024.
– Cindy Ragsdale
