Faith@Ease

I tried to keep a devotional reading schedule for the Advent season of 2017. Well ahead of the first Sunday of Advent I began surveying various aids and booklets produced from a variety of sources.

Keeping this schedule proved more difficult than I anticipated. I almost settled on a booklet produced by The Living Compass Ministry associated with the Episcopal Church entitled Living Well Through Advent 2017, and subtitled Practicing Wonder With All Your Heart, Soul, Strength, and Mind.

Being a big fan of the human ability to wonder, I began a daily reading of this little booklet.

Alongside that, I planned to read N.T. Wright’s newest book in his “For Everyone” collection called Advent for Everyone: A Journey With the Apostles, published by the Westminster/John Knox Press.

I struggled to continue through Christmas with these small books, but on the evening of the Second Sunday in Advent, I fell across a 140-minute filmed concert of Handel’s “Messiah” by the Collegium 1704 of Czechoslovakia, conducted by its director, Vaclav Luks.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtrIpTUbtc8&t=415s).

The concert reminded me of an exposition I’d read about this classic oratorio nearly ten years ago: Messiah: The Gospel According to Handel’s Oratorio, by Roger A. Bullard. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996).

I began re-reading Bullard’s book and discovered it to be as much the devotional guide I’d been seeking as any of the others I examined.

Let me note that Handel’s Messiah is an oratorio especially for Easter and thus provides a devotional for the church’s Lenten Season. However, the text–or libretti–is an anthology of scripture compiled by Handel’s friend, Charles Jennens. Relying on the King James Bible and the Psalms as rendered in The Book of Common Prayer, Jennen’s text is dominated by the prophets, the Psalms, and the gospels.

Bullard’s excellent commentary proves itself a devotional for the entire Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Lenten seasons. Reading it while listening to the aforementioned concert is providing me with a wonder-filled time of contemplation and joy.