Advent
Hule and I have decided to do more this year for Advent. That’s new for me. Lent had been new for me the last few years: not the concept of Lent—just the idea that it’s more than the horrific prospect of no chocolate for 40 days! In a similar way, the concept of Advent is not new to me, it has just mostly been a time for slick purple and pink candles in crunchy Styrofoam wreaths, opening little calendar doors each day, a countdown of shopping days ‘till presents, cookie baking and tree decorating.
So, being a virtual “nubie” at Advent and an information junkie—I went to the stacks. (Thank you Richland County Public Library.) I checked out about a dozen books on Advent and have been reading the Advent Lessons and Carols Scriptures for this year: Genesis 2 & 3, Isaiah 7 & 53, Luke 1 & 2, Hebrews 1 and John 1.
I’m finding that Advent is a time of waiting for the Messiah—the fruition of all of the Messianic promises. Wait, Prepare, Rejoice, Love are the 4 “watchwords”.[1] This week is about waiting. Ireton informed me that: “In Hebrew, the word for wait is also the word for hope.” (Ireton 2008, 22) Hope has been one of my special words lately--one I’ve thought about a lot. Hope=Esperanza in Spanish; the name I would give myself if I could rename me.
It seems there are two kinds of hope. One is a hope in people: fallible humans. This hope is less sure. This hope has the capability of disappointing. “I hope he will do what he said.” “I hope she will make it.” It implies some sort of trust, some kind of vulnerability, but the open-endedness of not being certain. Secondly there is hope in God. If we cannot hope in God, in whom can we hope? This is a more certain hope—a hope that does not disappoint. Here, once one believes God is true and good and all-powerful, then hope feels more like waiting, and our hope is in that we heard his promise correctly, discerned rightly, what he meant when he said in Isaiah (about 735 years before Christ came[2]):
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14b
Immanuel means God with us.
God doesn’t mind making us hope a long time—wait for many years. Just as we wait now for Christ's second coming!
And so, part of Advent is to put myself back in that time between 735 B.C. and C.
C=Christ is here!!! Christmas!! Wahoo!!!
I’ll have to admit that it takes a little pretending to wait—hope—for the Messiah when I know he has already come. It’s like Good Friday when we mourn for Christ’s death but we really know he will rise again. I guess it's also like watching a really sad movie the 2nd time around: crying, hoping, fingernail biting is not the same when you know it will end well.
And so this week, I wait… I hope… for GOD WITH US!!!
Loretta, I love reading your heart on written "paper" (aka blog :O)
ReplyDeleteYou write beautifully and as always your heart is tender and precious towards the Lord. Thank you for breaking your "Never have a blog" rule. :O) love you, Becky