Advent 2025, Day 25
Day 25, December 24, 2025
Theme:
Love
Readings:
Reading: 2 Samuel 7:8b-12,
Reading: 2 Samuel 7:14a: "I will be his father, and he will be my son."
Reading: 2 Samuel 7:16
Gospel: Luke 1:67-79
Reflections:
God makes big promises to David in the passages of 2 Samuel chapter 7:
vv. 1-5: God sends word to King David via Nathan. David wants to build a temple to honor God, and God puts it on pause. He's going to build a better temple through Jesus. And God will not allow David to build the first temple, but he will allow Solomon to do it.
vv. 8b-12: God is clear about what he has done and will do for David's family legacy, including Jesus.
v. 14a: God promises to be Father, not just God or Lord, to David's lineage, including Jesus.
v. 16: David's throne will be everlasting. Jesus' kingdom is without equal and eternal.
We see in today’s readings God's generational faithfulness once again. In the 2000 years from Abraham to Jesus, and now 2000 years after Jesus, we should be amazed at God's faithfulness and reliability.
In the Gospel of Luke, Zechariah acts as the one who finally pulls the story together. As a priest, his entire life was a devotion to the Law and the Prophets; for him, this moment was a seismic, life-altering revelation. He realized that every promise—from the covenant with Abraham to the throne of David—was converging. His own son, John, would be the final herald and the preparer of the way, while Jesus was the Way itself: the Messiah anticipated for over forty generations (see Day 18)!
Today's song captures the situation:
"Long lay the world in sin and error pining."
Oxford defines pining as: “suffering a mental and physical decline, especially because of a broken heart."
40 generations, 2000 years... That is indeed a long time for a tiny nation to wait (pine away) for its king! Midnight between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is epic; It represents the divide in history between God's promise not yet being fulfilled and Jesus actually arriving. Christmas Eve is so much deeper an event in world history than Santa on a sleigh or the other icons we've imposed on the season. The difference between December 24 and 25 is night and day, almost literally. They represent the difference between ignorance and knowledge. Between evil and righteousness. Between hope and fulfillment. The night of December 24 is such a truly Holy Night.
Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love... they are culminating now in our Advent devotional series! Thank you for reading and cooperating with God's Spirit, who wants all good for us. The Spirit wants to counsel and form us into Jesus' image, that we might bring Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love to our hurting world.
May you enjoy the fulfillment of Advent wholeheartedly tomorrow.
May you let the liturgy of Advent form you over a lifetime, not just this year.
May God Himself give you great Hope, deep Peace, exuberant Joy, and His Love.
Song: O Holy Night, by Pentatonix
The Advent 2025 playlist is ready for you to listen to on Apple Music. It's diverse, and it was so much fun to put together as I read through the scriptures and wrote this series.
NOTE the songs are on Apple Music, which you can get for a month for free if you are new... I just didn't want an obnoxious YouTube Ad ruining your quiet time :-)
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If you are looking for a nondenominational church in the Denver area, check out denverchurchofchrist.org
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