Hell's Terror: How Advent Heals Our Image of God

Advent helps to heal our blurred and bungled image of God. Suddenly, we see a God who is the exact opposite of the image that Hell Lovers have conjured. Indeed, as Charles Spurgeon so powerfully reflected on the meaning of Advent:

“God with us. It is hell’s terror. Satan trembles at the sound of it; his legions fly apace, the black-winged dragon of the pit quails before it. Let him come to you suddenly, and do you but whisper that word ‘God with us,’ back he falls, confounded and confused. Satan trembles when he hears that name, ‘God with us.’”

Incredible imagery, and in stark contrast with the men quoted above.

Advent is hell’s terror. The Gospel of Christ is hell’s terror. And no matter your viewpoint on hell, the meaning of these words echo with power.

The image of God our forebears have handed down to us may, in significant ways, be broken, untrue, and harmful. The Hell Lovers on Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter may be loud, terrifying, and even confusing.

But if we open our hands, eyes, ears, and hearts to receive the image of God we inherit through Advent, the confusion begins to evaporate like so much mist.

Amber JonesDecember 22, 2023Advent, Divinity, Image of God, Healing, Christmas

The Lowly Made Lovely: The Soul was Created to Feel Its Worth

The truest thing about God and us is that God lifts up the lowly, nourishes the hungry, adopts the orphan, and goes back to find the lost.

Because God loves us, we lowly are made lovely.

The greatest malady this world suffers is our inability to comprehend the worth of the human soul. This is why we hate, hurt, reject, and ignore. It’s the source of our violence, our shame, and our shadowed evils. It’s why we deny God and seek our own self-interest. We’ve lost the wonder of a God who is so steadfast in love toward us that God comes to us, in us, and through us to heal us all and restore us to our rightful places in the Divine Dance of love.

Today, in the holiness and beauty of Advent, I invite you to pray with me that God renew our minds to the stunning implications of the worth of our souls and what God’s plan for communing and indwelling means for us all.

Who could you be if your life was firmly rooted in the soil of this kind of fertile love? Who could we be, all of us together, if we flowed in the freedom that comes from the Incarnation; that is, being fully seen, fully known, and comprehensively loved?

Amber JonesDecember 15, 2023Advent, Spiritual Formation, Soul Care, Incarnation

God-Bearers: The Offensive Advent Invitation

Like so much else in Christianity, Advent is offensive.

Perhaps we’ve grown numb, over the span of millennia and from the re-telling of this narrative and from the commercialization of Christmas, to the shock of incarnational theology; but, today, let’s sit with Advent afresh and attend to the shattering implications.

Because our paradigms must be shattered so that we can comprehend the truth, God came as a human baby through the body of a vulnerable woman. Because new wine cannot be poured into old wineskins, God devastated our cognitive categories and crossed every boundary.

Because God wants Creation to birth God into the world in every conceivable way, in every single moment, in all possible circumstances, and in every particular soul, God has deemed us theotokos too. Because God is faithful to us, and to everything God has created ex amore, or out of love, this baffling salvation has come to us through the mysteries of a woman, a manger, a cross, and a tomb.

Join me today in conversation about the offense of Advent and what it means for us all.

Amber JonesDecember 13, 2023Advent, Disappointment, Disenchantment, Christmas

God Says Their Names: What Four Unlikely Women Mean for Us All

With quaint creche Christmas scenes depicting Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus alongside shepherds, wisemen, and various farm animals, the raw and shocking hope of Advent is often reduced to sentimentality. We may quickly glance at the nativity scene on the church’s front lawn while narrowly making it to our Christmas Eve candlelight service, or we may conjure the familiar picture of baby Jesus in our minds while singing Silent Night, but the warm feelings this invokes aren’t in proportion to the paradigm-shattering message contained within the story of Advent.

This Advent season, here on the show and at my Substack, The Golden Thread, we’ll be taking a different approach by exploring some of the darker themes that are often overlooked in our pre-packaged Christmastime lessons.

Today our conversation partners will be an unlikely group of women who the gospel writer Matthew included in the genealogy of Jesus. Their names are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba (the wife of Uriah), and their placement in the genealogical account of Jesus’ descent is unusual because they are all women of questionable repute.

Biblical scholars, theologians, and everyday Bible readers have scratched their heads over why exactly Matthew would include women at all (which was not customary), much less four of “questionable repute,” in this genealogy which is supposed to be a matter of pride and critical importance in establishing Jesus’s title as “King of Israel?” Consider the dark and twisted nature of these women’s stories, which we will not gloss over today in our search for what’s real in this Advent story.

Join me in conversation with these four women today.

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Amber JonesDecember 13, 2023Advent, Disappointment, Disenchantment, Christmas