Furrows, be
glad.
Though earth
is bare,
one more
seed is planted there.
Give up your
strength the seed to nourish,
that in
course the flow’r may flourish.
People, look
east, and sing today
Love, the
Rose, is on the way
-
Eleanor Farjeon , “People, Look East,” ELW 248
Advent is my favorite season of
the church year. It has the best hymns, lectionary readings full of challenge
and hope, opportunities for prayer and reflection, and leads up to Christmas.
Of course, not everything about Advent is fun or easy. Advent is a season of
waiting, and waiting can be tricky business.
Waiting can be a passive activity.
Often waiting implies that someone else is responsible for moving forward.
Waiting can inspire feelings of boredom, laziness and even helplessness. Waiting
in a long line, to renew a Driver License or return something at a store during
the holidays, is generally dull and frustrating. Waiting also leaves room for
worries and fears to grow. Waiting for test results, or for a child to arrive
home when she’s already later than expected and not answering her phone.
Waiting is no one’s favorite activity.
During Advent, we wait both for
the commemoration of Christ’s birth and for Christ’s ultimate return to our
world. We wait for a new heaven and a new earth. We wait for Christ to usher in
the Kingdom of God. We wait for the lion and the lamb to lie down together at
last. We wait for peace on earth. These are the hopes with which our Scriptures
fill us during the season of Advent.
If our hopes really are so grand,
so unattainable, what can we do but wait, discouraged at daily news of war and
heartbreak? Will we allow the tedious and the troubling to paralyze us into
passive inaction? Or can we find another way to wait? Our Bible stories this
time of year exhort us to keep awake, to wait with hope and watchfulness, to
prepare. In short, they call us to active waiting. We are responsible for how
we wait, for what we can do in the meantime, for how we live our lives now even
as we look to God’s future.
See, one of the great paradoxes of
our life together in Jesus Christ is that God calls us to participate in the
impossible. God calls us to prepare the way for Christ’s return, to live out
the kind of peace and justice for all that we can never achieve in our world,
but for which we can always strive. God calls us not to wait in despair at the
number of hungry neighbors we see, but to wait in joyful hope, sharing with
those neighbors and actively seeking the day when all will be filled.
God promises us an ultimate future
of love and human flourishing, of peace and joy in Christ. We can share in the
work of bringing about that future, waiting in action and hope because we trust
that God’s promise is for us and for all the world. Even in the darkest dead of
winter, God will plant seeds to grow into glorious flowers of the future God
seeks for us. Can we find these seeds, nurture them and help them to grow? That
is the active waiting to which God calls us in Advent.
Thanks,
Pastor Andrew
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