Advent begins
29/11/15 05:14
I am probably busy every year, but it seems like I am especially busy this year. Yesterday was a full day with a funeral in the morning and decorating the church in the afternoon. Today after worship we will go to Eagle Butte to attend a memorial and funeral tonight and tomorrow. When we get back it is newsletter week. I have to prepare for a concert on Saturday evening and I am narrator for another on Sunday afternoon. In the meantime, we have a lot of physical setup that needs to be done at the church. We need to get the newsletter out this week and there are reports to prepare for meetings and people to visit and a host of other undone tasks. My desk at home and my desk at work are mazes of papers that need to be sorted, many of which need to simply be thrown in the wastebasket.
In short it is typical for my life. It isn’t that I am a disorganized person, though we all could be helped with a bit more organization. It is that I have a long-standing habit of tackling more than I am able to accomplish.
Today, however, is the start of a new year in the Christian calendar. We begin Advent with a reminder of the expectations of the people who lived in the time of Jesus. Our people have had visions of a new and brighter future that we have carried for thousands of years. We know that God is near, and we often wonder what the world would be like if it was more directed by God’s will than by our own limited human vision. We have read the promises of the prophets and we know that Gods promises are fulfilled in God’s time not our own. We understand that our human relationship with God plays out over many generations and yet we like to think of ours as a pivotal and most important time. We’d like to be the hinge on which history turns.
In the midst of the busy nature of our lives, in the midst of our sometimes-unrealistic anticipation, Advent comes as a gift each year.
We are asked to simply wait.
We are invited to practice patience.
We can see the problems of the world. The news headlines are filled with disasters and diseases and famines and refugees and violence and injustice. Too often we think that we need to dive in and fix all of the problems. Faithful work is required and we are allowed to participate, but we don’t have the ability to fix all of the world’s problems. Sometimes we have to trust God.
Sometimes we need to wait.
For me the art of patience has been an acquired skill. I believe that I am more patient than I was when I was younger. I think that I have learned to take a slightly longer view of progress and understand that not everything that is good can happen on my time schedule.
I still need the season of Advent to teach me more, however. I need to be reminded that there is virtue in watching and praying and preparing.
One of the paradoxes of a life of faith is that God’s promise is both about the future and about the present. One of my teachers was fond of saying “The not yet already is.” We are called to live as participants in God’s new order even while the old order holds sway. We are called to live with peace and justice in a violent and unjust world. While we wait for the complete revelation of God’s way, we are called to live into the new order.
The challenges of living as those who belong to the future are multiple and complex. There are times when others misunderstand our ways. There are those who are threatened by our insistent on justice and our sharing with those who are less fortunate. There are plenty of good folks who just don’t understand. The present world suggests a life of fear. God invites us to lay aside our fears and live in anticipation.
I remember being a small child and thinking that the four weeks of Advent stretched on interminably. I was longing for Christmas with its presents and food and family time. It seemed as if Christmas would never come. These days it seems as if we are in a headlong rush and there is no way to slow things down to a reasonable pace. Before we know it Christmas will have come and gone and we’ll blaze through Epiphany and into Lent.
There are, however, in the memories of my childhood, clues to a better way to manage time. To the extent that I am able to remember and recover some of that child-like anticipation and wonder I will experience a slowing of time. There will be time to simply wait and wonder. Not every moment of Advent needs to be scheduled. There is plenty of time if we take the time.
And Christmas - all twelve glorious days of the season - will be a wonder this year. We will put the hustle and bustle of preparation behind ourselves and take time to simply be together. We’ll lay aside the rushed schedule and focus on developing relationships with others in our community. We’ll make time for sacred conversation and deep sharing. I resolve to celebrate every moment of Christmas and be in no rush to take down decorations and move on. After all we have the season of Epiphany to celebrate Christ’s presence even more.
That, however, lies in the future. Today our Advent journey begins. Four Sundays and their attendant weeks to get our hearts ready for the promised one. A season to lay aside all of the trappings of preparing spaces and decorating homes, or at least to get our priorities straight and remind ourselves that preparing ourselves is far more important than preparing spaces.
Our journey has begun. And a journey it will be.
In short it is typical for my life. It isn’t that I am a disorganized person, though we all could be helped with a bit more organization. It is that I have a long-standing habit of tackling more than I am able to accomplish.
Today, however, is the start of a new year in the Christian calendar. We begin Advent with a reminder of the expectations of the people who lived in the time of Jesus. Our people have had visions of a new and brighter future that we have carried for thousands of years. We know that God is near, and we often wonder what the world would be like if it was more directed by God’s will than by our own limited human vision. We have read the promises of the prophets and we know that Gods promises are fulfilled in God’s time not our own. We understand that our human relationship with God plays out over many generations and yet we like to think of ours as a pivotal and most important time. We’d like to be the hinge on which history turns.
In the midst of the busy nature of our lives, in the midst of our sometimes-unrealistic anticipation, Advent comes as a gift each year.
We are asked to simply wait.
We are invited to practice patience.
We can see the problems of the world. The news headlines are filled with disasters and diseases and famines and refugees and violence and injustice. Too often we think that we need to dive in and fix all of the problems. Faithful work is required and we are allowed to participate, but we don’t have the ability to fix all of the world’s problems. Sometimes we have to trust God.
Sometimes we need to wait.
For me the art of patience has been an acquired skill. I believe that I am more patient than I was when I was younger. I think that I have learned to take a slightly longer view of progress and understand that not everything that is good can happen on my time schedule.
I still need the season of Advent to teach me more, however. I need to be reminded that there is virtue in watching and praying and preparing.
One of the paradoxes of a life of faith is that God’s promise is both about the future and about the present. One of my teachers was fond of saying “The not yet already is.” We are called to live as participants in God’s new order even while the old order holds sway. We are called to live with peace and justice in a violent and unjust world. While we wait for the complete revelation of God’s way, we are called to live into the new order.
The challenges of living as those who belong to the future are multiple and complex. There are times when others misunderstand our ways. There are those who are threatened by our insistent on justice and our sharing with those who are less fortunate. There are plenty of good folks who just don’t understand. The present world suggests a life of fear. God invites us to lay aside our fears and live in anticipation.
I remember being a small child and thinking that the four weeks of Advent stretched on interminably. I was longing for Christmas with its presents and food and family time. It seemed as if Christmas would never come. These days it seems as if we are in a headlong rush and there is no way to slow things down to a reasonable pace. Before we know it Christmas will have come and gone and we’ll blaze through Epiphany and into Lent.
There are, however, in the memories of my childhood, clues to a better way to manage time. To the extent that I am able to remember and recover some of that child-like anticipation and wonder I will experience a slowing of time. There will be time to simply wait and wonder. Not every moment of Advent needs to be scheduled. There is plenty of time if we take the time.
And Christmas - all twelve glorious days of the season - will be a wonder this year. We will put the hustle and bustle of preparation behind ourselves and take time to simply be together. We’ll lay aside the rushed schedule and focus on developing relationships with others in our community. We’ll make time for sacred conversation and deep sharing. I resolve to celebrate every moment of Christmas and be in no rush to take down decorations and move on. After all we have the season of Epiphany to celebrate Christ’s presence even more.
That, however, lies in the future. Today our Advent journey begins. Four Sundays and their attendant weeks to get our hearts ready for the promised one. A season to lay aside all of the trappings of preparing spaces and decorating homes, or at least to get our priorities straight and remind ourselves that preparing ourselves is far more important than preparing spaces.
Our journey has begun. And a journey it will be.