December 9: And He Will Purify
♫ Music:
Day 11 - Wednesday, December 9
Title: AND HE WILL PURIFY
Scripture: Malachi 3:2-3
But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? for He is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: And He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.
Poetry:
Eye Mask
by Denise Levertov
In this dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day,
eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all.
ABIDING IN HIS REFINING LIGHT
Echoed in Handel’s energetic melodies, the prophet Malachi’s questions seem laced with dismay. “Who may abide?” and “Who shall stand?” before the One who “is like a refiner’s fire,” who comes to “purge” and “purify” all that is unworthy? We understand that these are rhetorical questions—that no one, in their right mind and earthly body, can bear the glorious, penetrating, blinding light of divine Presence without coming undone. We rightly desire purity, but we also recognize that purification requires pain.
Denise Levertov’s “Eye Mask” gently reframes our field of vision. Like light, darkness works on us in different ways. It can terrify, if it hides our fear or loneliness or sin. But in different circumstances, darkness can provide respite and space for reflection. For the poem’s speaker, darkness offers a kind of rest, but it seems a tenuous, temporary one—a reprieve from work she is “not ready” to complete. The darkness holds for her a tension, underscored in the poem’s short, two-word hinge — “I need,” she says, not a flash of fire but time in the dark, to retreat, to repair, and to reach down “like a root / not [yet] ready” to support the full weight of the branches above.
Levertov’s poem underscores how the purification required for us to “stand” in God’s presence takes place not just in purging, painful blasts of light but in the sanctifying day-to-day moments of our lives. Roots grow in the dark like bodies repair during sleep. Indeed, the speaker’s moments in the dark behind the “eye mask” offer her a chance to admit the deep and desperate need that drives her plea: “shelter me.” Levertov reminds us that even and especially in our daily rhythms—of teaching, or parenting, or forgiving yet again, or hoping still in the face of grief—we can see God’s sanctifying presence at work in us, drawing us to disciplines of faithfulness and gratitude at grace.
The poet’s reminder parallels how artist Susan Savage describes the meaning of her Invocation. The artwork is meant to reflect “the infinite presence of Christ,” who, as the incarnate “vessel for our salvation,” “inhabits our souls” and “mak[es] us new” from the inside out. Both works of art provide a frame for understanding Malachi’s questions, reminding us that we stand and abide in Christ’s presence only by His enduring grace and mercy in our lives.
One of the glorious paradoxes of the Gospel is that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). May we rest and rejoice in that paradox, during this season! In the early darkness of these Advent evenings—and in what so many of us have experienced to be the relentless losses, griefs, anxieties, and loneliness of this year—may we sense a steady growth, in us, of “a root / not [yet] ready” for glory but longing to be so.
Prayer
Father, thank you that you shine light into the dark places of our world and our souls, not to terrify but to woo and transform weak sinners by your beauty, your glory, your mercy, your truth. Help us to see, celebrate, and testify to your refining work in our lives, even in moments when the darkness seems impenetrable.
Amen.
Bethany Williamson
Associate Professor, English
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Invocation
Susan Savage
2005
Acrylic on canvas
20” x 24” x 2.25”
“My life has been like a silver vessel, valuable and useful, but prone to tarnish. Yet in the refiner’s hands, I stand redeemed. Because he inhabits my soul He is always with me, and making me new.”
---Susan Savage
By elevating a simple, silver vessel to a place of contemplation, artist Susan Savage portrays something deeper and more spiritually significant in her work. As a symbol for the sacred, the simple elegance and refined presence of this silver vessel brings the viewer face-to-face with metaphors for Biblical truths. Savage says that “It is my intent that my images reproduce the look of the visible world, but simultaneously offer something beyond mere physical appearances. The bowl emerges as a vehicle for a continuing story of meditation, mystery, truth, and reverent beauty. By taking the commonplace and lifting it up to a state of contemplation, the vessel exists to glorify, and it exists to signify. As my faith informs my vision, it becomes the reason for my work to exist. Consequently, I see my images as devotions, as a way to draw the viewer more deeply into contemplative meditation as it taps into one’s spiritual realm in some way. I like to think that my images are reminders of what we already know, but because the familiar is now somehow unfamiliar we pause as we are brought into a realm of transcendence, into a realm of revelation, even if words do not come easily.”
About the Artist:
Susan Savage is an American artist who received her BA in art and MFA in painting from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has had a long and rich career in secondary and higher education as a Professor of Art at Westmont College in Santa Barbara. Savage’s metaphorical paintings of objects as vehicles for devotional contemplation and dialogue have connected her personal and professional life on many levels. Her paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums both locally and nationally, and her work has been the focus of several featured articles and publications over the years.
susandsavage.com
Music #1:
“HigherHoly” from the album HigherHoly
Lyrics:
Draw me nearer
Draw me closer
I just want to know your ways
Take my heart
And purify it
I just want to know your ways are...
Higher
Infinitely, infinitely
Higher
Your ways are
Holy
Infinitely, infinitely
Holy
It’s so easy
To look the other way
When my neighbor needs my help
Holy Spirit
Teach me how to see
Beyond myself
Because your ways are...
Father, I want to know your ways like in the Days of Moses, in hopes I get to see your face and be in a daze from your motion. Just to be close to you is a grace that I’m holdin’ onto kinda like
How Jacob wrestled alone with you until the break of mornin’ for the sake of knowin’ that he would be blessed. And I wanna be in just the same position that he was in and see what comes next. But I’m gonna need clean hands and a pure heart. Holy Spirit come teach me and lead me as you are. I’m made in your image and likeness so help me to be like you, righteous as you are. Yes you are
Definitively different
How is it that You could surrender up all your privilege and still remain omnipotent?
It’s infinitely greater than anything and so I must admit, God, your ways are so much...
Higher
Infinitely, infinitely
Higher
Your ways are
Holy
Infinitely, infinitely
Holy
Composer/Lyricist/Performer:
IAMSON, also known as Orlando Palmer, transformed inspirational Christian music in 2017 with his highly acclaimed, self-titled, debut album IAMSON. As a singer, songwriter, musician, and producer, IAMSON reaches his listeners with mesmerizing arrangements and impactful lyrics. In one of his most requested songs, “Easy to Love,” IAMSON describes the freedom found in full devotion to the Christian journey. In partnership with his lyrical skill, his music spans the sounds of acoustic and inspirational easy-listening to high energy gospel. To date, IAMSON has been featured in various concerts and recording sessions around the world, notably participating in The Porter’s Gate worship albums.
https://iamsonmusic.com/
Music #2:
Messiah, HWV 56, Pt. 1: 6. But Who May Abide
Lyrics:
But who may abide the day of His coming?
and who shall stand when He appeareth?
for He is like a refiner's fire,
Music #3:
Messiah, HWV 56, Pt. 1: 7. And He Shall Purify
Lyrics:
And He shall purify the sons of Levi,
that they may offer unto the Lord
an offering in righteousness.
Messiah Performers/Musicians/Lyricists/Composer:
Unless otherwise noted, all Messiah performances are by Margaret Marshall, Catherine Robbin, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, Robert Hale, Charles Brett, Saul Quirke, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Monteverdi Choir conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Biographical information for the performers and musicians can be found by clicking here.
About the Poet:
Priscilla Denise Levertov (1923–1997) was a British-born American poet. After Levertov moved to the United States, she was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain Poets, especially by the mysticism of poet Charles Olson, the style of William Carlos Williams, and the Transcendentalism of Thoreau and Emerson. Levertov’s conversion to Christianity in 1984 was the impetus for her religious poetry. In 1997 she brought together 38 poems from seven of her earlier volumes in The Stream & the Sapphire, a collection intended, as Levertov explains in the foreword to the collection, “to trace my slow movement from agnosticism to Christian faith, a movement incorporating much doubt and questioning as well as affirmation.” Levertov published more than twenty volumes of poetry and was also the author of four books of prose.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/denise-levertov
About the Devotion Author:
Bethany Williamson
Associate Professor, English
Biola University
Bethany Williamson teaches courses in British and world literature, as well as first-year writing. She earned her Ph.D. at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, specializing in Restoration and eighteenth-century British literature and the problems posed by globalization and the Empire during the Enlightenment period and beyond. Her article on “English Republicanism and Global Slavery in Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines” appears in Eighteenth-Century Fiction; another on “Margaret Cavendish, the Royal Society, and the Alchemy of the Arabian Sands” is forthcoming in The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. A New Jersey native, she is thrilled to be near the ocean again. When not reading and writing, she enjoys playing works by her favorite piano composers, traveling, cooking, and backpacking.