“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The word Advent comes from the Latin word adventus meaning “coming” or “arrival.” Traditional churches celebrate this season of the church year during most of the month of December leading up to Christmas. It reminds us how the Jews waited for thousands of years for the coming of the Messiah, and we too now wait for His Second Coming at the end of the age. I found Bonhoeffer’s quote about Advent to be profound, equating our current human experience as a sort of prison, where we eagerly await our eternal freedom and redemption, something we can neither choose nor affect. We must hope only in Christ to rescue us from our prison, for only He holds the keys to our cells.

If there is one thing that drives me absolutely up the wall, it’s people who quote Bible verses out of context to support whatever they’d like to say that particular day. Jay Winters has written a great post about keeping verses in context that I wanted to share with everyone.

The post also explains how chapter and verse subdivisions were a later addition to the Bible, and are not inspired by God. This is one of the leading contributors to people citing verses divorced from their context. Enjoy!

Here, then, is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God’s Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.
          - R.C. Sproul

I’m going to try to post a short quote every week under the title “Weekly Wisdom.” Here’s the first one:

“Every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor.” – Charles Haddon Spurgeon