Christians have long prayed “O” prayers just before Christmas. This post is the second in a series of reflections on the prayer for the day.
O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the Bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the Law on Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
Christmas is coming! We are getting near to it, but from where did we start?
We know we are going to Jesus’ Bethlehem, but we must not forget that first it was David’s.
We must not forget our roots, and this includes our incalculable debt to the Jewish people. This is not just polite, not merely wise, but a religious necessity.
Our own lives show the importance of acknowledging where we came from as part of celebrating where we are going.
As a college professor, I see young adults decide on how they will relate to family heritage. The temptation, a very strong temptation, is confuse the need to become yourself with cutting off the roots that make the self possible.
If home was bad, this is understandable, but still unwise. We have to account for our heritage whether good or bad. If home was, for the most part, good, then breaking away is an ugly thing.
Ingratitude is a sickening evil that can quietly corrupt us. I should know.
It is no excuse, but ingratitude is an easy error in these times.
We are a pretty demanding people.
Most things we get in the United States we label “rights” and think of the government, parents, and church that give us so much as merely unprofitable servants. We deserve to be served. As a people we pretend that England, Africa, Spain, Russia, Greece, indeed all of the Old World made possible the American experiment.
As a nation we are newborn, but not without parents.
Even Adam had a father and we are many generations from Adam.
We have nothing that we do not owe to God, but also to those that God used in the past to bring us to where we are. There are no self-made men and women.
As I grow older, I can look at pictures of my great-grandfather and recognize myself in his features. What seems most mine, my body, is a gift from those who shaped the future by marrying and raising children. If they had bought stock, but not made babies, then there would have been no Reynolds to spend the wealth they created!
No thankful child grows tired of learning from the lives of his ancestors. Reynolds, Combs, Lanham, Walls, Wines, Canterbury, Radford . . . so many names that were once living men and women whose choices made any choice I make possible.
My debt to them, but especially to my parents, is great.
We are as indebted to others for our ideas as for physical being. My debt to other thinkers is nearly complete. In my entire lifetime, I will be fortunate if I can say just one thing, or half of one thing, that adds to the sum of human wisdom. Of course with painstaking effort many can add to the sum of human knowledge, no small feat for the great scientists, historians, and scholars of our time, but knowledge is not wisdom.
We could know every fact there was to know and still not have advanced one step toward true wisdom.
I owe C.S. Lewis, Dayton Reynolds, Plato, Al Geier, Trollope, Deborah Modrak, Isaac Asimov, Phillip Johnson, J.P. Moreland, Sheldon Vanauken, and Aristotle so much! Some taught me directly and others through their books. No good student ever grows tired of thanking his excellent teachers. Often these teachers are unknown to others, but wield great influence in the lives of their students. Men and women with names like DeMint, Larkin, and Balentine worked hard in junior high and high school to make me a better person and scholar.
All this makes the base ingratitude and wickedness that some Christians have practiced against the Jewish people all the more sickening. Persecution is bad enough in itself, but to come from those who owe a debt of gratitude is even worse.
Even some robbers will pay a debt of gratitude to the children of benefactors. Before God came to the womb of Mary, He came to Moses in the fire on Mount Sinai. There would be no Calvary if there were no Sinai. He was Adonai before He was Christ. The Old Testament is the foundation of the New.
Mary was a Jewish women when the Angel appeared to her and a Jewish woman when he left. The God who redeems us by the blood of the Cross at Easter, first redeemed Israel from Egyptian bondage by the blood of Passover.
The star of Christmas was over the City of David.
We must not forget any of this for a moment this Advent.
O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the Bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the Law n Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.