An Advent Reflection

2020: What. A. Year.

It could almost go without saying at this point. And yet, it feels important to give language to the shared human experience of this year. Living in the midst of a global pandemic has altered nearly everything familiar and dear to us…just as it has for nearly every other human on this earth.

Advent feels especially made for this year – like a container to hold all the sadness and longing of 2020 that is also big enough to hold tension with the knowledge that this is not the end of the story. Our heads may know that to be true, but right now, we are still very much in the messy middle. 

We are bearing the weight of waiting, and it is costly to our bodies and souls. We are not meant to exist in a world of isolation and virtual connection, where we cannot see or hug our family and friends. Where we cannot even look upon the face of our fellow image bearers. Where the longing for healing and restoration is felt so constantly and acutely.

This middle part of the journey, filled with uncertainty and an inability to know how things will turn out, is where Christ delights to break in.

Hope came to earth in the baby Jesus born so long ago to a people who had been living in darkness for hundreds of years, awaiting the arrival of the promised Messiah. That same Christ promises us strength and peace by his presence that will sustain us in our personal and collective waiting, both now, and until he comes again to make all things new.

Thanks be to God. 

This piece is part of the Advent meditation series at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and is based on the lectionary texts for December 20 (Psalms 24, 29 & 8, 84 // Isaiah 42:1-12 // Ephesians 6:10-20//  John 3:16-21)

Adventy

I like to invent words. Mostly it’s is just for fun — like asparagi as the plural of asparagus. Other times it’s because language fails to adequately capture the essence of a thought, feeling, or experience. In this Advent season where we celebrate that Christ has come but also look forward to his coming again, I feel a convoluted mixture of gratitude and disappointment, contentment and longing. I am reminded that Advent is a season made to contain this breadth of human emotion and experience. And we have a God who is present with us in it all.

It is tangled beauty – this merging and overlapping of layers of mingled joy and sadness. But I know of no actual word that conveys the feeling of holding these in tension. I have decided that “adventy” is the word for that feeling.

I feel adventy as I steal quiet moments from the busyness and chaos to be still. I feel adventy as I enjoy time with friends and family that pushes loneliness away. I feel adventy as I hear stories of pain and loss while also believing in and longing for God’s goodness, provision, and light to break through the broken places in me and in the world.

There is dissonance awaiting resolution. Scripture promises this adventy feeling will not last forever.

The great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent who is called
the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world…the accuser of
our comrades has been thrown down.

This is not tame language. And it should not be. It is the language that rewrites the end of the story.

Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our
God and the authority of his Messiah.

Friends, this is the good news of the Gospel — Jesus came and he will come again. We shall feel adventy no more.

 

This reflection is part of the Advent meditation series at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and is based on the lectionary texts for December 22 (Psalm 24, 29, 8, 84 // Genesis 3:8-15 // Revelation 12:1-10 // John 3:16-21)

Following at a distance

This post was originally published as part of the Advent meditation series at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, VA.

December 18, 2018 | III Advent, Tuesday
Ps 45 & 47, 48 // Isaiah 9:1-7 // 2 Peter 1:12-21 // Luke 22:54-69

And Peter followed at a distance.  Luke 22:54b

I’m Peter. I follow Jesus at a distance, too…more often than I care to admit. I want to follow more closely, but the closeness requires something of me.

To follow more closely, I need to focus on whom I am following. I need to lay down what I am carrying. I need to relinquish my attempts at managing and controlling things. I need to release my desires to our God who faithfully and abundantly provides, even if differently than I might choose.

This Advent season, in the midst of papers and final exams for graduate school, the ongoing search for enough greeters and ushers and chalice bearers to serve on Christmas Eve, and myriad other tasks, I have felt a deep longing to draw closer to Jesus. It has been my intention to create still, quiet space each day to spend with God, but my mind wanders and I have felt restless and unsettled.

Even so, in my struggle, I have continually felt invited to come. I have felt invited to confess my distractibility and inattention, to name my longings and desires, and to lament the brokenness in me and around me. It has not been the peaceful, quiet communing with Jesus that I envisioned, but it has been beautiful and good.

Confessing my need and asking for help has been its own form of drawing near to Jesus. As we come in our lack, we are met by the One who promises to guide us until we die and who is our God forever and ever (Psalm 48:14).