🦁 Advent 2-6
Reflection
Good morning and welcome to the 13th day of Advent. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Psalm 27, Isaiah 4, and Acts 11. And I just the other day uploaded a new post directly to the training room at PewPewHQ that deals with military dependents.
You can check it out at pewpewhq. com slash trng, or you can go to the website and click on resources, or hover over resources and click on blog. The training room is essentially our blog. And one of the most recent ones, I talk about what are military dependents and where are they in the Bible. And just a quick overview, there's three basic types of dependents, there's adult, there's spousal dependents, there's child dependents, and then there's adult or other dependents.
And spousal dependents are, it's pretty self explanatory, if you're a soldier, if you're a service member, if you have an active contract with an armed service branch in the United States, and you're married, your partner is considered a spousal dependent. Even if they make more money than you, they are considered dependent upon your income and your benefits, etc.,
etc. The other one, child dependent, also known as BRAT, which apparently originated in the United Kingdom and stood for British Rail Accompanying T. I can't remember what the T stands for. But it was an acronym that the American GIs picked up and then kind of adopted for their own kids. But it's essentially a family member who would accompany a soldier, you know, in the UK to whatever station they were going to.
And that's like how it is here. Most duty stations, with the exception of hardship tours like Korea, I don't know if there are any others, but they'll go with you. Your family goes where you go. A child dependent is any biological, adopted, or stepchild, um, up until age 21 who are unmarried or 23 if you're an active adult.
sO anybody under the age of 21, biological step, you know, you don't have to be adopted, but if you're married and that spousal dependent has a child, they become a child dependent. And then adult or other is usually a parent who is incapacitated due to age or health or some kind of disability.
And that service member is the only person that that individual can rely on for support. And that person would be an adult dependent or an other dependent. And there's a bunch of dependents in the Bible, including Cornelius's. Family. Cornelius is the, the man from Caesarea who in Acts 10 has a vision just like Peter or similar to Peter and then they connect and Cornelius, the centurion in Caesarea.
He unlocks this vision of Peter's and the vision he summarizes in this reading in Acts 11. But he one of the things I love about Acts 10 is that it, the vision is explained in a little bit more detail. Don't call anything unclean that I have made clean. And Peter responds by saying, Oh, now I know that, that God shows no favoritism.
to Israel or to the Gentiles and Peter took that as a breaking down of the dietary restrictions, but also a symbol and a reflection of God's opening up the good news more deliberately and more widely to the Gentiles through his son, Jesus Christ. And what Cornelius It's not entirely clear. He's a centurion.
I, it's, he could either be actively serving in which case he's one of the centurions of the units that are protecting Caesar at the Roman Capitol for Judea, which was in Caesarea Maritima. And that's, he would have, he very possibly could have been light skinned, Italian born. But he's open to, clearly he's open to the, the God of the Jewish faith.
Cause he prays at the Jewish prayer times. Both Peter and Cornelius are praying according to the hours. The that three o'clock in the afternoon is when the afternoon prayers were offered and you would bring some, some meat or some bread to the temple to help feed the priests, but also serve as your sacrifice for the day or the week or whatever.
anD so Cornelius is not making sacrifices, but he's praying at the same time he sees the Jews pray. And there probably wouldn't have been very many Jews in Caesarea. So he's. He's traveled, he's aware of it. But also he sends a group of people in Acts 10, some of whom are his blood, you know, his son or his child, but some of them are referred to as his slaves or his servants.
There's also a member of his unit that goes with this group to Joppa to get Peter. So, Cornelius family his, all of whom are military dependents are, receive the good news and are baptized by Peter in their home in Caesarea. And Acts 11 goes on to talk about, you know, it's not about, he doesn't mention favoritism, which is just a line I really like but he says, if God's giving, you know, the Holy Spirit to them, to the Gentiles who am I to stand in God's way?
Right? Like sometimes we get so caught up in our own little beliefs and expectations we, we lose sight of the wondrous and scandalous inclusivity of the good news. I use this illustration frequently because it's so inspiring to me, but even the plans For the Holy of Holies inside the area of the, the inside, the temple that only the high priest would go to, the poles of the Ark of the Covenant would stick out.
This is part of the intended plan of the tabernacle, is that the, the poles stick out from behind the veil separating the holy place from the Holy of Holies where the ark stood. And it's like, it's this reminder that, you know, don't be surprised if God. kind of breaks through these, these false borders and boundaries that we set up.
Boundaries can be good, um, but intimacy is the breaking, is a consensual breaking down of those boundaries for the purpose of intimacy. And that's what God does. God doesn't violate our boundaries. Because God is abusive, God violates God's own set boundaries so that God can be close with us. God becomes incarnate in the world, enters human flesh to be intimate with humanity.
anD so that's why I think this story is, you know, Acts 10 and 11 or so, they are, they're central to the Christian's narrative of the Bible because this is the, the beginning. of the wide open doors that God has opened in Jesus Christ. anD so it's something that is universally important, but it's also particularly important to the military community because it features a military family, a military soldier and uses them for the furtherance of God's glory.
And so let's not lose sight of the purpose of not only God's grace, but the, the vessels through which God you know, uses or to, to, to break into our lives in order to be intimate with us and to get to know us and be a part of our daily lives. And so I think that's incredibly good news for soldiers, veterans, and their families.
And it happens to also be good news for the entire church.
