join the conversation

STORY: Advent Week 03

December 14, 2009

Posted in: advent

Engage Advent by using the ancient practice of Imaginative Meditation (found in the Engage Advent Booklet) to further consider the waiting of the following figures:

figure three: ESTHER
READ: Esther chapter 4 - (Mordecai) “ . . . For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?” Esther

Esther had risen to influence—but her influence was of no use without obedient action. Esther pleas for the life of her people, the Jews.

* In what ways do you inhabit this story (through Imaginative Meditation)?
* How do you see Esther as a figure of waiting?
* How does Esther’s plea foreshadow Christ’s incarnation on behalf of humanity?

figure three: HOSEA
READ: Hosea chapter 1-3 – “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.”

Hosea is the very picture of God’s unfailing, unending love in his husbandry of Gomer.

* In what ways do you inhabit this story (through Imaginative Meditation)?
* How do you see Hosea as a figure of waiting?
* In what ways do his actions reflect the Messiah’s coming?