Advent, the season of waiting.
Three friends who have longed for a child are expecting this year, and one just texted me the latest ultrasound video. I have prayed for this baby, and rejoice, yet there is still a long way to go. Waiting, hoping, days and days accumulate to weeks and months as a baby gestates, and for much of that time the outcome remains uncertain. How much more so for Mary and Joseph, bouncing on a donkey, stuck in a cave.
And once the baby comes, the stakes only get higher. We can't know who will survive and for how long, or rebuild torn ligaments, or mend broken hearts, or engineer academic success or convince anyone's heart towards faith. We can't solve loneliness or shame or addictions or rejections. As Area Directors for Serge, our hearts pour out into not only our kids, and the Ugandan kids we have cared for as surrogate parents, but also the kids on all our teams. So many face really, really hard times. How much more so for Mary and Joseph, whose child was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.
Then there are the systemic injustices that we long to right. I wish we could just guarantee visas, or protect our teams from removals due to rebel invasions or arbitrary politics. Or how about just leveling off the Ebola epidemic in the DRC? How much more so for Mary and Joseph as Jesus confronted the corruption and oppression of his culture, entering danger.
As Advent begins today, one of the first readings came from Isaiah 51:
Awake, Awake, O arm of the LORD!
Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep;
who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over?
When we pray for the unborn, or for the sorrows of older kids, or for the injustices facing those we love, it feels as impossible as a dry road through a churning sea. If our prayers are big enough, if we are really walking by faith, I suppose it should. Not a perfunctory mention of an outcome that is probable, but a desperate plea for something beyond our ability to solve. I think we spend most of our life in the Advent of waiting. Where the road ends into the ocean, with hostile armies approaching and no plan B route visible. Where the only salvation road is one that only God can make. Where waiting is not a passive lethargy, but a determined view of the deep waters and a deliberate choice to actively ask that the dry road become clear.
This Advent journey begins again, year by year, a call to wait actively and expectantly. To pray with large hearts and impossible dreams, that we could cross over to joy.
Three friends who have longed for a child are expecting this year, and one just texted me the latest ultrasound video. I have prayed for this baby, and rejoice, yet there is still a long way to go. Waiting, hoping, days and days accumulate to weeks and months as a baby gestates, and for much of that time the outcome remains uncertain. How much more so for Mary and Joseph, bouncing on a donkey, stuck in a cave.
And once the baby comes, the stakes only get higher. We can't know who will survive and for how long, or rebuild torn ligaments, or mend broken hearts, or engineer academic success or convince anyone's heart towards faith. We can't solve loneliness or shame or addictions or rejections. As Area Directors for Serge, our hearts pour out into not only our kids, and the Ugandan kids we have cared for as surrogate parents, but also the kids on all our teams. So many face really, really hard times. How much more so for Mary and Joseph, whose child was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.
Then there are the systemic injustices that we long to right. I wish we could just guarantee visas, or protect our teams from removals due to rebel invasions or arbitrary politics. Or how about just leveling off the Ebola epidemic in the DRC? How much more so for Mary and Joseph as Jesus confronted the corruption and oppression of his culture, entering danger.
As Advent begins today, one of the first readings came from Isaiah 51:
Awake, Awake, O arm of the LORD!
Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep;
who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over?
When we pray for the unborn, or for the sorrows of older kids, or for the injustices facing those we love, it feels as impossible as a dry road through a churning sea. If our prayers are big enough, if we are really walking by faith, I suppose it should. Not a perfunctory mention of an outcome that is probable, but a desperate plea for something beyond our ability to solve. I think we spend most of our life in the Advent of waiting. Where the road ends into the ocean, with hostile armies approaching and no plan B route visible. Where the only salvation road is one that only God can make. Where waiting is not a passive lethargy, but a determined view of the deep waters and a deliberate choice to actively ask that the dry road become clear.
This Advent journey begins again, year by year, a call to wait actively and expectantly. To pray with large hearts and impossible dreams, that we could cross over to joy.
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