Advent waiting: Inhabiting the space between the now and the not yet…. (@sallysjourney)

As we move through the season of Advent this year I find myself frustrated once again, frustrated because as for every year over the past few years I had resolved to make something of it. I had resolved to get alone with God, to find some quiet, to spend sometime in reflection, yet here we are with only one week to go before Christmas and I am wondering how we got here so fast.

As I sit amidst a whirl of thoughts it would be easy to berate myself for not doing what I had intended, but in a space this morning I found myself singing a simple song, “Oh draw me Lord, oh draw me Lord, oh draw me Lord, and I’ll run after you….” As I sang I found a hope being born within me, a fresh sense of God within turning me towards light and life and whispering to the hurt and hiding places of my soul “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

Taking time to soak this in I am reminded that Advent calls us to focus on the tension between the now and the not yet and to look forward, Jesus has come and will come again, and when he comes again all things will be made new. For now we live in a broken world, and within our own broken lives, we live quite often in a tension between our desires both holy and unholy. Into this mess and muddle God has spoken and still speaks, The Word has been made flesh and made his dwelling amongst us and light meets the dark again and again drawing us from our brokenness towards healing and wholeness. This seems complicated, and it is a deep mystery that God should love the world so much, love us as individuals so much that he would give himself for us, and even those of us who have known that for years would do well to contemplate it afresh.

And if we doubt it for a moment then perhaps we need to look afresh towards the God who came not at our invitation but at his instigation, the God who comes to the poor and the lowly, the rich and the powerful alike, the God who will not be kept away, for love cannot help but love even when that love is not returned. So God was there at Sandy Hook Elementary School as children and teachers were gunned down, God is there with the expectant mother in the refugee camp dreading the birth of her child for she knows there will be no food to feed him, God is there in the war torn and devastated places not the cause but the calling, the one whose light shines in the darkness, the one who brings hope when it seems all hope is lost. God comes into our individual darkness’s in the same way calling and drawing us, calling us to enter into that light, to be lit by it within and without. God has come, the darkness cannot prevail, Jesus born to us, Jesus dying and rising Jesus the over-comer is with us, and he will come again.

With no apologies for borrowing from Wesley’s Four Alls: All needs to be made new. All can be made new. All can enter into to that renewing. All can be renewed completely.

Photo by Sally Coleman