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An Invitation to Prepare Our Hearts

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It may be different, but Christmas will come. And true to its purpose, Advent will also arrive--but it will be no small thing to prepare us for this particular Christmas. Many of us are sadly focused on all that we will be "without" this year. It was for just such a time as this that the promise was given:

Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son,
and they shall call his name Emmanuel, "God with us." (Mt. 1:23)

This we know. Emmanuel, "God-with-us," has every intention of arriving in our lives, even as we so need God to do. There is nothing lacking in God's promise, but sometimes we fall short in believing that promise. Walter Bruggeman says it well,
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edge of our finger tips. (poem at end)

Make no mistake about it. It is not about our mustering up the enthusiasm necessary for Christ's birth. It is that Christ waits upon our awaiting.

We have been changed by this year we have experienced. Let us bring our changed self, our deep need, and our expectation to this coming season. Emmanuel awaits.

The Grace and Impatience to Wait: An Advent Poem

In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will.

And in this privileged place
we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than do we
and by those who despair more deeply than do we.

Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.

Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edge of our finger tips.

We do not want our several worlds to end.

Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case and make all things new.

 Amen