Advent: Stay Prophetic.

Prophecy feels a little out of fashion at the moment and I can understand why. Big P prophets, in some circles, have become hardly distinguishable from politicians, we’ve heard charismatic leaders manipulate the gift for personal gain, and TikTok has succeeded in muddying the waters between prophecy and conspiracy.

We seem to see predictions and promises every day. The mere tsunami of it, I think, fatiguing our desire for the genuine thing.

But Advent is laced with prophecy. There’s no avoiding it. From Mary’s conception to the place of Jesus’ birth to his very arriving in the first place. God loves to tell us what he’s going to do before he does it. Prophecy isn’t additional to the Advent story, it’s essential.

And it is for you and I, too.

At a meta level we live between Advents. The very fact that we know this shows how important it is to God that we love and hold prophecy. He’s returning, he tells us, and it’s going to result in the consummation of Divine Love with all creation. All through the New Testament the apostles call us to remember The Day and what it means for our joy and vitality now. Prophecy matters.

But there’s a personal element too. Because with the gift of the Spirit prophecy broke out of its cagey, cornered community and into the people of God. For the New Testament church prophecy was normative, expected, experienced and cherished. A way for the church to be encouraged, strengthened and comforted.

So whether it’s in the grand story of the ages or the little one’s we’re living, prophecy is meant to enable us in the spiritual life and our pursuit of loving union with God. But how?

Well, Advent offers us a hint in the story of Mary because in Luke 2:19 we read “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” What do we do with prophecy? We hold it, storing it away like a seed sown in the womb of our soul, that with care and awareness, it may slowly fruit within us.

Mary didn’t strive, she didn’t try to rationalise, she simply beheld it within her. There’s a beautiful mirror image here with her pregnancy. In pregnancy a mother has some influence - she feeds, loves, homes and carries the life within her - but she doesn’t have total power. The child has it’s own life, it’s own formation and surprise. For who the child will be, she can only wait and hope.

A mother holds the child in her normal living, forever conscious of the life within her, but carrying on with all she is and has to do. She beholds in the context of her ordinary, usual life.

And we’re invited to do the same with prophecy, whether it’s for the hope of the ages or a personal word. It’s not our place to figure it out. To shift images for a moment prophecy isn’t meant to be a road map, but a horizon line. It’s not meant to remove mystery, nor give us every step on the journey. It acts more like coordinates, a spiritually geographic magnet to draw us toward a new frontier.

That’s why for almost all recipients of prophetic words in the scriptures the outcome is marked more by mystery, confusion, surprise and even grief than crystal clarity and blow by blow instructions. Try to think of someone in scripture who nailed it, there are very few.

That’s because the point of prophecy isn’t actually knowing everything, it’s communion. Loving, rich, dependant and Person celebrating communion. Prophecy invites us to hold hope daily in God. To wait and depend on him with deeper urgency and awareness.

Like Mary carrying Christ, we’re called to love and carry the prophetic words given to us personally and through the prophets. Faithfully harbouring and nurturing them while simultaneously pondering them lightly rather than straining ourselves in them, expecting security in predictability.

When we do that prophecy fruits life and peace. When we predict the minutia, or take the burden of outcome solely upon ourselves, we fruit anxiety, resentment and fear.

Choose Mary’s way, the way of holding good things in your heart, allowing that seed to germinate and grow, waiting on the love of God to finish what he began.

If you’re carrying a word, and the way is foggy, hold onto it. Behold it. Let that be enough. God has its birth day close to his heart, and he’s bearing its good fruit in you now, already.

May you hold God’s prophetic word to you restfully,
lightly, allowing it to grow within you, changing you
from the inside out.

Much love,
Strahan.