Wednesday night was another asthma attack.  Cold and lonely ER again.

I slept a few hours Thursday morning, worked for a few hours, came home and slept again, and then finished my day.  I felt wrong, as if the sky was green and the grass blue.  Today, I stayed home, though I did work some this afternoon.  Mostly, I slept.

And I read Kleinig:

As Christians, we all experienced the power of God's Word in us as a word of judgment and salvation.  Its impact on our conscience is described most vividly is Hebrews 4:12-13:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

As we meditate on God's Word, we stand spiritually naked before God and in His sight.  His Word puts us face-to-face with Him.  That Word penetrates and exposes the secret reaches of our hearts; it lays us bare before God and holds us accountable to Him.  But, best of all, it does all this so that it can give us life and do its work in us.

Martin Luther explains the power of meditation on God's Word most memorably in a sermon that he preached on Christmas Day in 1519.  There he speaks about "sacramental" meditation on the Gospels and their stories about Jesus:

"All the words and stories of the gospels are sacraments of a kind, sacred signs by which God works in believers what the histories signify.  Just as baptism is the sacrament by which God restores us; just as absolution is the sacrament by which God forgives sins, so the words of Christ are sacraments through which he works salvation.  Hence the gospel is to be taken sacramentally, that is, the words of Christ need to be meditated on as symbols through which that righteousness, power, and salvation is given which these words themselves portray....We meditate properly on the gospel, when we do so sacramentally, for through faith the words produce what they portray.  Christ was born; believe that he was born for you and you will be born again.  Christ conquered death and sin; believe that he conquered them for you and you will conquer them."

When Luther speaks of the words of Christ as sacraments, he is not using the term in its narrow sense, but more broadly as a divine enactment, a sacred sign that conveys what it signifies.  Neither God's Word by itself nor faith in itself produces the kind of meditation that God desires.  Rather, meditation is the exercise of faith in Christ and His performative Word, for faith receives what Christ gives to use through His Word.  We receive, as we believe.

We can best see how this kind of sacramental meditation works from Luther's instruction on how to read a story in the Gospels.  He gives this helpful advice in his 1521 pamphlet "A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels":

"When you open the book containing the gospels and read or hear how Christ comes here or there, or how someone is brought to him, you should therein perceive the sermon or the gospel through which he is coming to you, or you are being brought to him.  For the preaching of the gospel is nothing else than Christ coming to us, or we being brought to him.  When you see how he works, however, and how he helps everyone to whom he comes or who is brought to him, then rest assured that faith is accomplishing this in you and that he is offering your soul exactly the same sort of help and favor through the gospel.  If you pause here and let him do you good, that is, if you believe that he benefits and helps you, then you really have it.  Then Christ is yours, presented to you as a gift." (100-102)

Selah.

He comes.  He comes to us.

What an Advent lesson there is in Kleinig's and Luther's words!

• The power of the Living Word.  
• Christ comes to us.  
• He is our gift. 
  

Do not all those seasonal sales out there now seem so insignificant?