December 4
Beloved of Good Shepherd Church,
Grace to you and peace in Jesus Christ our Lord!
Advent presents perhaps the greatest challenge of any of the seasons of the church year. Advent asks us to move slowly to Christmas. Everyone I know except maybe you was already running around to get ready for Christmas before the dishes were even cleared from the Thanksgiving table. Advent’s call to move slowly is a rather outrageous challenge in this season of hurry.
Advent is the preparation season during which we sit with Mother Mary as she waits for the right time to give birth to the child in her womb, our Jesus. I don’t know much about pregnancy, next to nothing really, but I don’t think I have ever heard a woman in her last month of pregnancy described as “fast.” I am an adoptive parent. Sometimes adoptive parents have longer pregnancy periods than biological parents. In fact, I bet they almost always do. Adoptive parents can wait for years for the arrival of their child. I remember once sitting on the ground in a gravel parking lot with my father while we waited for hours and hours for a lawyer to get a signature from a birth parent miles from where we waited. There was nothing we could do to speed up the process. We simply had to sit still and wait for the lawyer to come back. We didn’t know if he’d have the signature necessary for the adoption or not. We just had to be patient. It was excruciating, but also holy.
Advent invites long, slow waiting as a spiritual practice. As we begin the season of Advent I keep thinking about that wonderful line in the first Corinthians letter - “Love is patient; Love is kind.” Advent is all about patient, kind love. Love is patient because when we rush we miss things. Every moment and everybody and everything is shot through with the glory of God. So, Love patiently looks everybody and everything and every moment over twice and then a third time, so that it can all be honored as precious and beloved. Love is kind because we all make mistakes and come up short from time to time, and love understands that your last misdeed is not the totality of your being. So love kindly says to you, “All I see is your beauty shining through you like the sun. Thank you so much for being you.”
Advent is an invitation to walk slowly to Christmas so that we can practice loving patience and loving kindness. That sort of sounds like a plan for peace, doesn’t it? Are you up for the challenge of going slowly in Advent? I am, let’s try it.
Remember this always - God loves you, and I love you too!
Love is all,
Hendree+