Today’s the first day of Advent, the season when Christians traditionally mark with anticipation the birth of Jesus.
To the extent that we think of it, we usually think that Advent carries less importance than Christmas. It's an easily skipped prelude to the main event of the Incarnation, when the eternal, unchanging and unknowable Tao changed and became mortal for the first time and was an unremarkable baby few people outside his own family even noticed.
That’s so wrong. Oh God, we desperately miss the point when we do that.
Advent is a heavy season, darker even than Lent and that brutal Saturday when Jesus lay decomposing in the Tomb. Advent is heavy, oppressively so. It hunches our shoulders, bows our necks and furrows our foreheads with grief, with anger and despair.
Advent raises the accusing finger of human history, of every war, of every holocaust and genocide, every year of children’s lives stolen in slavery, every refugee denied safe harbor, every hour the wicked sit enthroned and defended by the powerful, and it points that finger in the face of the Almighty, and it demands justice.
“Don’t you give a shit?” it asks, and heaven’s only response is “Be patient.”
And the years grind slowly on, and God stays silent, and his people are patient, and they grow old and die; and another generation replaces them and it too is patient, and grows old and dies; and so does another generation, and another and then another.
“Come into the darkness,” the generations cry together. “Come into the darkness and make a difference.”
This month join the cloud of all the others throughout the ages who waited for something they knew was missing, even if they couldn’t express it. Learn the longing they felt, and decide with them if it was worth the wait.
Welcome to Advent.
Copyright © 2019 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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