Greetings and blessings to you all as we begin this season of Advent. If we look around, we already see the external signs of Christmas. The ongoing preparation for Christmas has already begun and will certainly try to draw us away from the “slowing down” to which Advent invites us.
Hopeful Waiting
The readings for the First Sunday of Advent set the tone for what this season is about. It is not about waiting in check-out lines as on Black Friday, but about another kind of waiting— a hopeful waiting— a preparedness and a vigilance that says in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Lord, make us turn to you; let your face shine on us and we shall be saved.”
In the first reading for the First Sunday of Advent, the Prophet Isaiah laments the sinfulness of the Hebrew people and he pleads with God to come down and bestow his divine love upon them once again, a steadfast loving kindness given to all who accept the invitation to this covenant.
Longing for a Savior
The people are ready for change in their lives. They have found themselves in exile, in Babylonian captivity, their lives in anguish and suffering. They long to experience God’s involvement in their lives once again. They have felt abandoned, but Isaiah expresses a faith and a hope which longs for a savior. If we look around, we too experience the anguish and suffering of a culture that has turned away from God.
Isaiah makes it very clear that God has plenty of evidence to give up on them. Then he speaks a word: yet. “Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are the work of your hands.” In that small three letter word, yet, there is great hope and trust and faith.
The Plight of Our Own World
As we survey the plight of our own world, we too can acknowledge the sinfulness of our society. We see corporate greed. We see a narcissism that is characterized by an unhealthy self-absorption; we see a world that defines self-worth by achievement rather than belief in one’s value as a child of God; we see a world living in fear, the coronavirus pandemic still at large; we see more and more people living in poverty; we see more and more of an intolerance of others. More people find themselves in depression and misery than ever before.
In the words of Isaiah, we too ask, “Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?” We too long to see the Lord “rend the heavens and come down.”
God Will Not Give up on Us
Will that three letter word, yet, carry us into this Advent season, expressing great hope for us and setting us free? Let it be a reminder to us that we are people whom God has greatly invested much. In fact he has invested everything in his only Son. For God has taken flesh and come among us. Jesus is our sign that God has not and will not give up on us.
Jesus is God’s yet — a holy pause in the cycle of the world’s sinfulness where the mercy of God steps in.
The season of Advent is about waiting quietly in that yet, in that holy pause— while the rest of the world waits in that shopping line. Which will we choose?
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