Hebrews 10:5-10 (NRSV)
Read Hebrews 10:5-10 on biblegateway.com
Verse 5Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; Verse 6in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
Verse 7Then I said, 'See, God, I have come to do your will, O God' (in the scroll of the book it is written of me)." Verse 8When he said above, "You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings" (these are offered according to the law), Verse 9then he added, "See, I have come to do your will." He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. Verse 10And it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Devotion
My three-year-old will not be good at Advent this year. He does not like waiting. As anyone with a toddler knows, patience is not their strong suit. But having a strong will to do things the way they want is in their arsenal.
I often hear from parishioners that they want so strongly to understand God's will for their lives. I hear them asking if God has some preordained plan for them. Inherent in this question is a yearning to identify a sense of purpose, and perhaps an explanation as to why certain things happen. But today's excerpt from the letter to the Hebrews makes an important point in this regard: As Christians, we understand that God's hope for us is that we do God's will. "What is that will?" you may ask. The answer: that we live like Christ in service to others. The broken realities of this world haven't changed God's plan for us — nor will they ever. Live and love in service, and you will have realized God's will for your life.
Prayer
Willing God, open our hearts, even in the darkest of times, to understand that your will for us is clear in the story of Jesus: that we serve as we have been served. Amen.