Daily Devotion

The season of Advent has begun!  Advent is a four week time of waiting and preparing for the coming of Christ; in Bethlehem as a baby, in our lives today, and at the end of time.  Our devotions during Advent will focus how we might prepare our lives for Christ’s coming.  This week our theme is, “Preparing Our Hands.” 

Saint Teresa of Avila was a 16^th Century nun whose teaching continues to influence lives today.  One of her best known quotes is this:

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

It is in the Spirit of Teresa’s words that we are spending this first week in Advent preparing our hands for the coming of Jesus.  How can you use your hands to bless the world in the name of Christ?   How might serving others with your hands make you more prepared to welcome Christ at his coming?

Right now GSLC is serving Christ with our hands through the Christmas gift program.  One of our partners is Taft Elementary School.  Our ministry at Taft reaches far beyond Christmas as we use our hands to stock and staff the food pantry at the school, tutor students, provide classroom visits and activities (before COVID), lead a community garden, provide school supplies and uniforms, and at Christmas we give gifts to the students in our Adopt-A-Class, classrooms, and stock the “store” where students can pick out small rewards when achieving their goals. This is the work of our hands, which is the work of Christ.

But it doesn’t end there.  For you see, the students at Taft are also the hands of Christ, offering blessing to us.  I have watched relationships form between our volunteers and the students for several years now.  I love when our group from GSLC shows up at our Adopt-a-Class rooms and I hear students calling out the names of our folks, and our folks greeting the students with warms smiles and love.  To know each other by name is holy ground.  The blessing of serving with our hands is multiplied many times over when we know the name of the one we are serving—and the one who is serving us.  

How might you serve with your hands in such a way that a relationship forms with the one you serve?  How might that provide opportunity for the serving to become mutual?  What blessing might a vulnerable child—not unlike one born in a stable—offer to your rather comfortable life?

If you are reading Luke’s Gospel this month, today is Luke 2, and can be found here: Luke 2