Advent Devotion for December 3, 2019 from Apostles By-the-Sea - Episode 3

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Matthew 21:12-22

¹² Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. ¹³He said to them, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
   but you are making it a den of robbers.’

¹⁴ The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. ¹⁵But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry ¹⁶and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,
“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
   you have prepared praise for yourself”?’
¹⁷He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

¹⁸ In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. ¹⁹And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once. ²⁰When the disciples saw it, they were amazed, saying, ‘How did the fig tree wither at once?’ ²¹Jesus answered them, ‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea”, it will be done. ²²Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.’

 

Reflection:

My house is not a den of robbers, but I have to admit that it’s not always as much a house of prayer as I would like. Sometimes I don’t pray as I ought to because I let other things take priority, or I get overwhelmed with the multitude of people and things to pray for and I shut down. Sometimes I try to pray with my head more than my heart and I over-complicate my prayers. However, prayer can be beautifully simple, and as Jesus reminds us in today’s reading, it can be as beautifully simple as that which comes from the mouths of infants and nursing babes. Jesus tells us that we should pray with faith - the kind of faith that can move mountains. As we anticipate the coming of our Lord, let our time of waiting be marked by faithful, mountain-moving, prayer.