What is advent?
[ad-vent]
1. a coming into place, view, or being; arrival: the advent of the holiday season.
2. the coming of Christ into the world.
3. the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas, observed in commemoration of the coming of Christ into the world.
1.
THOU art of this world, Christ. Thou know'st it all;
Thou know'st our evens, our morns, our red and gray;
How moons, and hearts, and seasons rise and fall;
How we grow weary plodding on the way;
Of future joy how present pain bereaves,
Rounding us with a dark of mere decay,
Tossed with a drift of summer-fallen leaves.
2.
Thou knowest all our weeping, fainting, striving;
Thou know'st how very hard it is to be;
How hard to rouse faint will not yet reviving;
To do the pure thing, trusting all to thee;
To hold thou art there, for all no face we see;
How hard to think, through cold and dark and dearth,
That thou art nearer now than when eye-seen on earth.
4.
If we might sit until the darkness go,
Possess our souls in patience perhaps we might;
But there is always something to be done,
And no heart left to do it. To and fro
The dull thought surges, as the driven waves fight
In gulfy channels. Oh! victorious one,
Give strength to rise, go out, and meet thee in the night.
5.
"Wake, thou that sleepest; rise up from the dead,
And Christ will give thee light." I do not know
What sleep is, what is death, or what is light;
But I am waked enough to feel a woe,
To rise and leave death. Stumbling through the night,
To my dim lattice, O calling Christ! I go,
And out into the dark look for thy star-crowned head.
This season, I have been training myself in advent, learning how to look for the Christ-child who is coming, who has already come. At first I was confused by the paradox. How could I wait for Someone who has already come? But as the last weeks have quietly slipped by, I have heard the groaning of my own heart and the hearts of others for Someone to come and swallow up death with life and erase the darkness with light.
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. (Romans 8:22-25)
Little Christ-child, your people waited with long hope for You to come. Now I wait to celebrate Your coming, to remember and wonder at the news that the Eternal has bent low to redeem us in the most amazing way, that He is no longer Far-Away, but is Near-To-Us. Enlarge me in the waiting, Lord.
Amen.
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