Quite simply, I can’t adequately find a way to give a stronger recommendation for Fleming Rutledge’s book, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ. It has been refreshing and challenging all at the same time as I’ve learned more about what this season should entail in my life.
Tag Archives: Fleming Rutledge
In Advent you must face the darkness
If there is anything I am learning in this season of Advent it is to allow the darkness to do something in me.
Embrace Advent
“Oddly, of all the seasons of the year, Advent preaching is the easiest, at least in my opinion. Why is that? It is because Advent is about a world in darkness, and it is not at all difficult to show that this is a world of darkness, certainly not at this period in our history.Continue reading “Embrace Advent”
Advent is war
Finishing the calendar year in Advent also brings my reading into Revelation. (NOTE: While it is the end of the “calendar year”, it is the beginning of the Church Year.) Over my lifetime I have gone through a lot of changed thinking when it comes to the Book of Revelation. It has become to me a bookContinue reading “Advent is war”
Advent is Rude
Stepping into the Anglican tradition this year brings deeper reflection on this season of Advent. Our worship each Sunday is far more reflective and “somber” than the rest of the season indicates all around us.
Advent calls us to deep examination
“Today I have one concern and one concern only — to bring before you the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. How can we not love him with every fiber of our being? We were unworthy, but he counted us worthy. We deserved judgment, but he gave us mercy. We were slaves to sin andContinue reading “Advent calls us to deep examination”
The season of darkness and longing
Advent begins in darkness. Advent calls us to examination and to remember the coming judgments of Christ. We don’t like darkness. We don’t like waiting. We’ve misinterpreted “judgment” so we don’t like that, either. So, in the process, we’ve diminished a season that is very much needed in the Church.
We need our peace disturbed
Some thoughts from Fleming Rutledge’s great work, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ: “Advent begins in the dark.”
The darkness of Advent and communal lament
“Unlike American Christianity, the Bible is not individualistic, but thoroughly social in its orientation. When the Church groans with Isaiah, ‘Thou hast hid they face far from us,’ it speaks as a corporate body with a common lot. If one suffers, all suffer.” — Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Christ
Apprentice 2 Jesus 