Friday, December 11
Psalm 31; Haggai 1:1-15; Matthew 23:27-39
Listen to the author read their meditation and prayer:
Dr. Steven Tomlinson Advent Meditation
Because blindness makes brokenness bearable, we learn not to see. We avoid that which challenges our self-image. We hide what we judge unacceptable. To survive, we redact. We don’t reckon the cost.
The cost is life. The practice of insensitivity cramps the heart — and since we fear what we cannot see, fear blooms wherever we cultivate ignorance.
When we’re bent on blindness, anyone who speaks truth becomes for us a prophet. We will fight those possessed of the courage to dig up what we’ve buried and the power to speak with the voice of our conscience. We will silence the truth in self-defense.
Even as Jesus holds us to account for the injustice we do in ignorance, he speaks gently to our clenched hearts: “If you could only see.”
It could happen like this: Circumstances overtake your defenses. Despair loosens your grip. Suddenly, you find yourself in a wide place. Suddenly you see what you were ignoring — your power, the good you can do — and what you meet has a startling sense of Being on your side.
In this season of waiting, let us remember: as we wait for Him, he is also waiting for us — waiting for us to make room, to build the temple and open the door; for he is waiting to give rain and grain and refuge and marvelous kindness, waiting to gather us to Himself.
Holy One, deepen our sense of your presence that in your grace we may find the courage to open our eyes and be healed. Amen.
Dr. Steven Tomlinson
Joe and Jesse Crump Visiting Professor of
Leadership Formation and Vocational Pedagogy
SEMINARY OF THE SOUTHWEST
Dr. Steven Tomlinson coaches Wall Street, Fortune 500 and high-tech start up executives and managers. He is a Founding Master Teacher at the Acton School of Business for Entrepreneurship. He taught economics and finance at The University of Texas at Austin where he designed and directed the MBA professional development program. He is also Joe and Jesse Crump Visiting Professor of Leadership Formation and Vocational Pedagogy at the Seminary of the Southwest and an accomplished playwright and performer. His award-winning solo shows have been produced in Austin and off-Broadway.
