Advent: Joy?

I cringed writing the title of this. Joy has seemed so distant and foreign still. But I sat in on a Catholic mass this past Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, known as Gaudete Sunday. The beginning of the week of joy. When the priests wear rose colored robes and light a rose colored candle.

joy.

but how?

Just like hope...so hard to grasp. Words that surround the advent season. Even as I type my breath shallows out and my jaw tightens; there's a lot of tension with those words and feeling like I need to just do more to 'gain' these things.

But I can't force joy. Or hope. I can't fake it, either. But something a friend said yesterday, coupled with what I've been rereading in Nouwen's book Compassion, made me smile. A hint of joy? Perhaps.

We were discussing my tendency to sit back and observe the world and (over)analyze. And my friend lightly commented, "Isn't that what this season is all about? Immanuel, God-with-us, who doesn't just sit back and watch us. He gets involved. He doesn't point out our flaws and analyze why we do things. He willingly, joyfully enters our world and gets his hands messy. He engages with us because He thinks we're worth it."

And that's what makes my God different than all the rest. As a baby, he became dependent. As a toddler, he fell and scraped his knees. As a boy, he was reprimanded by his parents. As an adult he was ridiculed, abused, misunderstood, and heartbroken by loss, illness, and betrayal. He has experienced the things I have. And what do we all want? Someone who is able to relate, to understand, to feel the joy and pain we feel day to day.

Christmas and advent is a reminder that this is who we have. An advocate who left the comforts of heaven, not so that he could say we owe him anything, but to say...

You are worth it...

Advent: A Second Glance.

Mary and husband have waited 8 long months. It’s almost time. I wonder if she kept it to herself, that the hope everyone had been holding out for (or given up on) was just a month away from arriving.

I don’t think hope is something one can keep inside. But there were so many mysteries surrounding this moment. Did Mary sleep with Joseph before marrying? Did she sleep with someone else? Or was her story really true? How many people knew her story? Were there whispers on the street as she walked by, cradling her belly?

And Mary herself, I don’t hesitate to think she and her family may have had weakened hope in their Jewish Messiah coming so soon. Four hundred years or more of story after story, told again and again by family gatherings held long in to the nights. Where was she in the middle of all this? A young adolescent, disenchanted by her family’s religion? Or holding fast to what she’d been taught? I wonder if Mary needed hope the most.

I know God wants to bring hope to the hopeless. Maybe baby Jesus was an answer to not just the world’s cry but possibly Mary’s last plea for help. Maybe she was beginning to give up on the Old Testament promises, on those stories, on herself and on her God.

But now, 8 months in, does she believe the promise she received face to face with the angel? Or is she questioning it? It’s easy to encounter something so mystical that it’s almost unbelievable, and then question it once it’s vanished from the forefront of our minds.

Except…within her she has proof. Evidence that God hears the cries of His own. That He longs to bring hope, to fulfill His promises of redemption, hope, and love. And right now, Mary has him all to herself. No one else has the connection to this child that she does. And I wonder if she felt closer to God. If having God in living form inside of her caused any anxiety, overwhelming sensations, fear, the typical things a soon to be new parent may experience. And if these created space for God to sit with her in those moments of anticipation and soothe her.

In this we have an incredible picture. A picture of a God so personal, that He will become present with us in our moments of overwhelm. But yet, an illustration of a God so compassionate that He is sending us a rescue, not just for Mary, not just for His people, but for the world, that He may show and shower it with His love.

Advent: Hope. Waiting. Absence.

In light of Advent, I'll be posting a reflection each week to help recapture that mystery and magic we used to know when we were young. Because I don't believe it evaporated as we've aged. We've just seemed to have misplaced it. I hope we find it again and are able to revel in it. Enjoy.

Journal Entry 12/1/10

I just don’t want to do this anymore. I’m done with it. God, I’m done with this season of my life. A season that perhaps parallels the Christian season of advent. What is advent? It is a new season. A season of waiting. More? More waiting? Ok. Better than hurrying.

Waiting. Waiting for hope. Anxiously waiting. For a relief from anxiety. For community. For togetherness once again with God. The intertestamental period, quiet, an absent God. A people who wait. Fearfully. And I wonder how many lost hope? I wonder how many gave in to the rise of their anxiety? I wonder which ones had given up? And in turn their children gave up? And their children? Until 400-600 yrs later, a generation of hopeless children. I don’t think I would have survived that time period.

But yet, I am in my own intertestamental period. Silence, absence? Distance. Waiting. With hope? Not quite. Maybe a small seed of such. But not really holding on to it too tightly. Fear of disappointment. That dropping feeling in your stomach where you’re too ashamed to hope, to be let down, again…

I wish I could have a hand delivered message from an angel. Like Mary had. Or maybe a north star. Something that says, “Hey, hold on. You’re almost through this. Hope is on its way but maybe not as you expected.”

My small seed of hope does have expectations. I feel like I know what it should look like, the kind of hope I want, the kind I need. The kind that satisfies that ache in the back of my throat and the bottom of my stomach.

And if it’s not healed? What am I to think? God remains absent? Uncaring? Uncompassionate? I’m not sure, but perhaps this is how the Israelites felt. That leaves me with a bit of comfort.