I hope to join the Common English Bible Blog Tour for Advent. I’m not sure if I’m too late, but I have made it a practice over the last few Advents to take my readings from the Advent Bible reading calendar, so I thought I would tie it in with my reading of the Common English Bible.

The first reading from the Psalms is Psalm 146. What a great place to start, given our political season in the United States.

Even as Christians, we tend to put far too much hope in the human institutions. Liberal or conservative, we want our politicians to behave like we think Jesus would behave. And every political season we put our hopes into “our” candidates. Then… every political season… we are disappointed in some way. Our “leader” turned out to be…  a politician. Who knew?

The words of Psalm 146:3-4 (CEB) ring true:

³ Don’t trust leaders;
don’t trust any human beings—
there’s no saving help with them!
⁴ Their breath leaves them,
then they go back to the ground.
On that very same day,
their plans die too.

The call of Advent is the call to trust. The call is to know who to trust. It is time to know our God once again. The rest of the Psalm gives us the proper introduction we need to the God we must know. Realize who he is. Realize he calls us to follow him. We are called to live in Kingdom power doing what he does.

NOTE:

Learn more about the Common English Bible.