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This is what the Lord says: \u201cSing with joy for Jacob; shout for the foremost of the nations. Make your praises heard, and say, \u2018Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel.\u2019 See, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them will be the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor; a great throng will return. They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel\u2019s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son. \u201cHear the word of the Lord, you nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: \u2018He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.\u2019 (Jeremiah 31:7-10)

This word of Jeremiah is for exiles, a people scattered.\xa0 They will not always be on the outside of their hope, looking in.\xa0 One day they will possess it.

Through this text, there is good news.\xa0 All those broken, marginalized, scattered, cast out will be gathered up by the Lord.\xa0 The blind, the lame, and women carrying the hope of pregnancy will be among the throng.\xa0 This word of hope keeps company with the prayers of the psalms, like in its psalm twenty-three-esque picture of the good shepherd leading his people home beside streams of water.\xa0 Or like in psalm 121, God\u2019s people will not stumble for the Lord watches over them in their going and coming.\xa0 The people are coming home to their inheritance, and all God\u2019s promises are being made true in their return.\xa0

But they aren\u2019t there yet.\xa0 Just as we aren\u2019t.\xa0 This word is a future promise.\xa0 It\u2019s a good one, but it isn\u2019t here yet.\xa0 That\u2019s why this is an advent text.\xa0 It holds in common the tension of our faith: future hope and present prayer.

The people are given this word of future hope.\xa0 It is theirs to guard and keep with their very life and for their very life.\xa0 It is a sure promise from God: they will return from exile and from their time of being scattered to the ends of the earth.\xa0 Even the nations are told about these promises of God.\xa0 So sure is the promise that God invites the accountability of witnesses.\xa0 It is a public proclamation of the King: let all who hear it believe: God will gather up his scattered flock like a good shepherd.\xa0

In the meantime, however, the people are also commanded to pray.\xa0 Through songs of joy and petitions of praise, their prayers are to arise: \u201cLord, save your people, the remnant of Israel.\u201d\xa0 This is their faithful act of worship until the day the Lord accomplishes what he has promised.\xa0 They are to hold the hope and petition in praise.

What an odd thing, a praise-petition.\xa0 \u201cLord, save your people\u201d doesn\u2019t sound much like praise.\xa0 But it is, because it\u2019s grounded in a God and a promise so sure it can be believed as if accomplished.\xa0 There is joy in the hoping, even as there remains the deep tension of desiring.

So it is with us in advent.\xa0 We joyfully hope in the things we cannot see and have not received.\xa0 We prayerfully praise out our petition \u201ccome, Lord Jesus come.\u201d\xa0 Save all your people, now scattered.\xa0 Your restless church. \xa0Our wayward children of your covenant promises.\xa0 All those broken, marginalized, scattered, and cast out.\xa0 Gather us all, we expectantly, painfully, and joyfully pray.\xa0 \xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0

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