I have three books that I am using to shape my journey through Advent this season
The Grand Miracle: Daily Reflections For the Season of Advent (a collection of writings from different authors interacting with the likes of George Macdonald, Lewis, Tolkien, Sayers, Davidman)
The anticipated Christ: A Journey Through Advent and Christmas (Brian Zahnd)
Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer For Advent, Christmas and Epiphany (Sarah Arthur)
Along with this I have our Advent services, which, as it does every year, starts a journey through one of the Gospels which will carry on through to the Easter season. This year we are working through the Gospel according to Mark.
Reflecting on the first day of Advent, the morning began with a piece from Diana Pavlac Glyer in The Grand Miracle reflecting on a quote from C.S. Lewis,
We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us. (C.S. Lewis, Chiefly on Prayer)
Glyer reflects on making space in the Christmas season to be interrupted by the divine. To allow that presence to catch us off guard and to find us as we are, not in our carefully curated practices and celebrations but in our honest representations. She wonders about what this advent season requires of us, ruminating on the simple idea of simply being present. Present enough for God to break in, an act that can then inform our response- to move from being present to presenting ourselves to this God as we are.
As my pastor called us to do this morning, this fits with this notion of waiting for or anticipating this breaking in. In a broader sense we await Jesus’ return, the day in which all is made new. For this time, we find ourselves in the darkness of this inbetween space awaiting those foretastes of the world to come. Those moments when the light illuminates the darkness and reminds us of what it is we hope for.
One of the great practices we as Christians can engage as we wait is the continued prayer, come Lord Jesus, come. As our pastor noted however, to stop and reflect on what this prayer actually conjures up in us is to find ourselves face to face with all of the tensions and struggles and confusion and questions and uncertainties and doubts that come with it. What does it mean to prayer for Jesus to come? And how does this prayer unsettle our grip on the world that is? The lives we’ve built. The dreams we’ve made. The experiences we cherish. The things we value. How does this longing for the world to come fit into this picture?
That’s a tough thing to confront. And yet its precisely the “as we are” picture Glyer is getting at. For Jesus to come is for God to break in. It’s one thing to present some decorated version of ourselves that entertains the feel good notions of the seasons festivities. It’s quite another thing for that to catch us off guard. When it finds us clinging to those things we don’t want God to disrupt.
And yet, such an encouter has the power to open our eyes to a much greater reality. As Zahnd puts it in his devotional, this (the Christmas story) is “not really an encyclopedia of God-facts or a journal of divine jurisprudence, it is primarily the epic story of God’s ultimate triumph over evil.” Zhand points out that this story is not concerned with handing us some fleshed out account of the origin of evil, rather it is giving us a way into the central point of the story- evil has arrived and must be contended with. In fact, the judgment made in the beginning of the story is the same judgment that we find in the world to come- a judgment on evil. Not as moral action, but as an enslaving force that has invaded this world. It is the serpent that is cursed, which subsequently leads to a cursed land (creation). A land that cries out amdist the human story as the blood spilt on the ground illuminates the crisis.
But there is hope. Hope in the form of a seed. One day, the seed of the woman will bring about the crushing of the serpents head. This, the story says, will bring about the hoped for reality, the thing we are waiting and longing for- new creation.
A liberated creation.
As Sarah Arthur guides readers through in Light Upon Light, the words of a poem by Aurelius Prudentius ring out into this waiting space,
Of the father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be. He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He, of the things that are, that have been, and that future years shall see, evermore and evermore.
Or to echo the accompanying Psalm- The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. (Psalm 24)
And the refrain taken from Christina Rossetti (Later Life)
Remain; these days are short, but now the nights, intense and long, hang out their utmost lights; Such starry nights are long, yet not too long; Frost nips the weak, while strengthening still the strong, against that day when Spring sets all to rights
The Stories of my Life 