We may be ready to receive him

Last week, in my reflection on the Collect, I talked about being prepared to meet God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the somewhat confusing subject of God’s judgement. This week, the Second Sunday of Advent, we have a different emphasis, and we go beyond meeting, to receiving, into our hearts, him who is our Lord and our God.

For me, one of the important things about receiving our Lord and our God into our hearts is that it’s something we do by choice. We can choose to receive God/Jesus into our hearts. And we can choose not to. And the truly amazing thing is that whichever way we decide, it won’t make an iota of difference to the way God feels about us. His love for us isn’t dependent in any way on our love for him. His love for us is a gift, freely offered, with no strings attached.

That’s the God, the Jesus, that we’re praying we’ll be ready to receive in this Collect. And it’s that love that controls everything else. We don’t need to fear the scary things like “judgement”, because our Judge is also our Saviour, and he loves us, each and every one of us, as much as if we were the only ones too love.

For us to love God in the way that he would want us to, it has to be a free choice on our part. You can’t force someone to love you, it wouldn’t be love, it could never be love.

I came across a great quote by the theologian, Greg Boyd, which I’ll finish with:

To refuse to create a world where love was possible because the risk was too great seems to be beneath God. Love is really the only reason worth creating! It’s not freedom for the sake of freedom that God values — it’s love. Freedom is simply the only possible means to this end.

Greg Boyd

Love! It’s our raison d’etre.

Almighty God,
purify our hearts and minds,
that when your Son Jesus Christ comes again as
 &bbsp;   judge and saviour
we may be ready to receive him,
who is our Lord and our God.

Additional Collect for The Second Sunday of Advent
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council