Hope: It’s Been a Long Time Coming
Reflection Roundup has undergone a facelift of sorts, turning toward reporting conversations couched in relationships, boots-on-the-ground and “live from the field” items important to Christian leaders. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but may not concur. This month’s conversation includes some trusted resources for Advent that readers will not want to miss.
I’ve been waiting; we’ve been waiting, and it feels like forever. Curiously, I must confess that Advent often sneaks up on me. Alongside an ever-deepening love for the Christian calendar comes confession #2: Lent appeals more to my melancholHope: It’s Been a Long Time Coming
y personality. But this year, oh this year…know what I mean? It has been one in which God displays strength in weakness (I hope?). Two days into 2022, I shared some words with my church family, words about being with God and with one another, convictions I hold deeply and feel particularly strong about. If you’ve even opened your mouth publicly in expression of faith, you know what I learned. Those things we proclaim, we must reframe, rename, and regain in our own lives. Basically, they come back to bite us in the butt until we reacquaint ourselves with faith’s author and perfecter, our creator and sustainer, relying on God to breathe into our words, into us, new life. All that is to say I began waiting and practicing Lent three weeks early this year, and I’ve been waiting for Advent for about the same amount of time now as well. Thirty weeks of Ordinary Time is a lot, some years.
Have you ever had a particularly challenging day, to the degree that it’s just weird? Full of the stuff of stories we tell that begin with the phrase, “You won’t believe…” Often, when we begin to narrate these events with our closest ones, friends and family, a mutual sharing takes place in which we realize we’re not alone in our challenges. When we live difficult days or stretches of days, others are living them too.
“My car battery was dead this morning.”
“My car was broken into last night!”
And so it goes.
Sharing is one of the best things we can do to lift our eyes up and off of ourselves. Sharing with those who can direct our vision to the one who holds all things together is the best thing we can do (Col. 1:17).
We wait for responses to applications we’ve made for work. We wait on our bodies to heal, for the calendars of our doctors to clear. We wait on relationships to develop, for learning to occur, for maturation to take place, for paint to dry, and grass to grow. We wait for firewood to be delivered, for it to be our turn in the checkout line. For this one, I’ve honestly considered only buying grocery items 10 at a time so I can always use the self-checkout. But isn’t this a typical fleshly response to God’s request that we wait? Fine. I’ll do it myself. If there’s anything I could do I would, but I’ve been told to wait.
“Do you mind if I put you on a brief hold?”
“You bet.”
But then we turn to Advent. We conclude a year of waiting with a celebratory season…of waiting. Ironic, isn’t it? The Advent season began recently with a focus on hope. While exploring one of the resources recommended below, I wrote a prayer, as many of the offerings propose that participants do. This author’s idea is for hopeful Advent observers to re-read and continually pray the prayers they’ve written for a week at a time, revising and deepening the language, making a self-authored prayer truly a part of one’s self for the week. Today, I went back to read what yesterday’s pen put to paper. There was a stretch of words that didn’t even make sense, and I was struck in a new way by our kind God’s Spirit and the action we activate in prayer. At times, prayer is indecipherable, truly full of groans too deep for words (Rom. 8:26-7).
Gentle reader, if in the darkness of this post you are waiting for the hopeful turn, for a lifting to the light, Advent reminds us all of this truth: waiting is a holy experience. Waiting is an action in which we follow the example of God. In the action of creation, God exhibits God’s desire for connection, thereby creating a space in which the divine waits for us and has since the beginning of the time that we know. Every instance of God’s entrance into the world, into the lives of people, involves an awareness and then a wait. (Think Cheesecake Factory. We are hungry. We attempt human action and gain the response, “We are on a wait.”) The eyes of Adam and Eve were opened, and they knew they were on a wait. They heard the movement of God in the garden and hid from the God who would provide for them even in their disobedience. Generations of waiting continued through Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis prayer song, in which he declared his readiness to depart this world having seen the Christ-child for which he had waited his entire life, faithful to the message of the prophets (Lk. 2:28-32).
For this season of Advent, I’ve rounded up some tried-and-true resources to share. These artists and authors have shared their work with Christian community at length, and I’ve followed them for as long as I’ve been aware. They are all too good not to share.
Artist and author Scott Erickson, aka scottthepainter, shares his Advent interpretations in Honest Advent, on social media, and also live on tour. “The thing about the Revelation received in the annunciation is that all that you had going, and all that you had planned, is all over…it’s a transformation that you’re not in charge of.”
Kendall Vanderslice and the team at Edible Theology offer baking liturgies centered around table fellowship throughout the Christian calendar year. This Advent, they have forged an intentional partnership with WeWelcome, “an organization devoted to helping Americans become better advocates for our refugee neighbors.” This week includes a recipe for “Zala’s Bread,” from an Afghan refugee now living in North Carolina. Zala offers tips for hospitality from her perspective as an outsider in our country. In the Weekly Digest, find multiple resources including a free Advent 2022 guide, a prayer, a recipe, links to social media and other online resources on the gifts of Advent.
If Every Moment Holy, from the folks at Rabbit Room Press, has yet to find its way into your library of resources for prayer, gift it to your household for Christmas. There are two volumes, each with specific and practical foci, which can be purchased individually. In the meantime, treat yourself to the user-friendly, free, downloadable Advent journal and liturgy writing guide. This meditative focus will enable the participant to craft a personal or communal prayer to be read each week during the season.
She Reads Truth publishes beautiful workbooks full of scripture and resources with which to engage the message therein. Advent is a great time to sample their offerings, which include engagement in a weekly podcast and discussion community. Also offering He Reads Truth, this group presents flexible individual and community options.
The Biola University Center for Christianity, Culture, and the Arts presents the Advent Project. Each Advent (and Lent), individuals from within Biola University faculty and staff present a free, daily, communal offering of story and song for the season. Each curated post artfully and educationally shares a devotional through which the author reflects on scripture and then shares an associated piece of art and music. Every day is so different, the season unfolds like an intricate tapestry of memories and experiential meaning woven with diverse perspectives.
Lastly, this year my church, Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas, is working to make Advent more accessible than ever to our faith community, offering a sermon series, “Son of Adam – Son of God.” Keep an eye on social media for links to the latest offering and associated resources created especially with families in mind.
