We pray for God’s guidance for the day.
Have we done the little things set before us that reflect God in us?
It’s Advent. We sing carols and pray for peace, hope, joy.
What did we do yesterday and what will we do today to reflect that peace, hope, and joy?
We must beware that praying becomes mere words in a formula.
Prayer sets an attitude and perhaps a communication with God. But attitude just sets a direction. What we do when we leave our prayer mat or chair is what pleases God.
It happened back in the 70s. My unofficial title at that company was “the kid in engineering.” I was included in the management level whisked off to a company-wide conference. There I was introduced to the professional personal development and productivity guru genre.
I guess I’ll not forget the points the speaker emphasized–beware the Tyranny of the Urgent and Try Easy.
British writer Oliver Burkeman wrote in his last newsletter about Urgent. He calls himself the Imperfectionist. His book Four Thousand Weeks is worth the read…and re-read.
He describes urgency as “a whole state of mind, indeed of body: the anxious knot in the stomach, the clenched jaw, the furrowed brow.”
We get that way. We try to force our way through tasks many of which don’t even need to be done.
The opposite is to know what’s important and work through these in a planned way. Of course, sometimes plans go awry, but the “imperfectionist” adapts and continues. She tries easy.
Reflecting on Advent and beyond in these terms, consider the anticipation of the entire region of a spiritual awakening and a new order. Among some, I imagine even a sense of that urgency. Especially among Jews anxious for the overthrow of Roman rule.
And Jesus was born. Thirty years later he began his ministry. And many men could not wait. Getting rid of Roman rule was an urgent task in their minds.
They didn’t understand. Jesus obviously spent 30 years learning and growing. He worked his plan by teaching and mentoring those who didn’t yet understand. Then came the crisis moment–death, burial, resurrection. But that was later.
We’re still in the anticipation moment. What will the future bring? How will it change us? Change the world? Maybe today we still need to live with some of that anticipation. Perhaps this Christmas celebration and remembrance will bring some change in us.
Advent is a time of anticipation. We celebrate completion on Easter. Christmas day is sort of a completion—the celebration of Jesus’ birth. Even that birth is pure anticipation.
The question for us lies in whether we can live in anticipation.
Tension hovers thickly in the atmosphere. Living with tension requires developing a tolerance for uncertainty. It means living a day at a time. Sometimes an hour at a time. Living looking forward to a future condition without certainty of its completion.
I’m not an expert on US situation comedy TV shows. Probably people in China are more knowledgeable. But how many have you seen where there is romantic tension? The show will play for several seasons living with that tension. Then the writers can’t take it anymore. They write in a scene of sexual completion. Now, the show is changed forever. They have to find a new tension. It’s a different show.
Advent teaches us to live in the last century before Jesus’ birth when large groups of people were saturated with the anticipation of God’s stirring. That something new was going to happen. What would that new time look like? No one knew for sure. OK, I bet many people thought they knew. Mostly, they were wrong.
Now we are living in anticipation. What will happen? How will it change me? Change the community? Change the world?
Stories come my way every week about people who call themselves “Christian”, perhaps they are regular, bubbly, smiling church attenders, and yet the congruence between how they live and what Jesus taught us about how to live exists only in their minds.
I was going to write another brief essay about my disappointment. And then, I thought, what good would that do?
Most of us are probably just trying to infuse thoughts Jesus left us about how to follow him. After all, when he decided the time was ripe to start bringing people together, his invitation was simply, “Follow me.” He didn’t ask for belief first. No one of his first followers believed (maybe Martha and Mary?). Three years later, they still didn’t believe. That is, until the resurrection, they didn’t believe.
But they all followed.
And they stumbled. And argued. And learned a little. Forgot a little. Were disappointed a little.
Still they followed.
Even though I don’t feel it, I am an old man. I’ve seen many things. Experienced many joys and disappointments. Sometimes I feel like Mark Twain, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”
This is Advent. It’s a remembrance of a time when people were looking for Jesus. But they didn’t know it, exactly. And when they had it, they didn’t know what it was. And when they followed, they didn’t know where they were going–even unto the last days.
Later reflecting on the journey, they realized it was the best days of their lives.
And they shared it.
What can we do but to take that same journey and look back and say it was the best days.
There was a man with whom I once co-taught a Bible class who would often say, “This is going on my list of things to ask when I get to heaven.” He recognized that he didn’t know everything. He knew whom to ask.
We are in Advent. It’s a mystery.
A virgin becomes pregnant. We know that can happen. A couple of hormone-driven teens, sperm gets sprayed a bit, who knows, it happens even without intercourse. But with Mary, we don’t know. There is no detailed manual of exactly what happened. It is a mystery.
Joseph has a vision. Zachariah has a vision, Mary had a vision. Simeon had a vision. Anna the prophetess had a vision. Why so many? At the same time? It’s a mystery.
Jews at that moment of history were living with heightened expectation. I think Greeks and Romans were, also. It was a time ripe for something to happen. Why then? It’s a mystery.
I have some engineering training. Engineers are notorious for seeing things in black/white. A problem solved or not. But I also forged a Liberal Arts education. I’m comfortable with shades of gray, nuance, mystery.
I am not driven to figure out a logical, rational, scientific explanation for all this. It’s a marvelous mystery. And where would we be without the birth of Jesus? But that’s a mystery.
Maybe more of us need to be like my old friend Omar, who admitted he didn’t know everything. But he could be patient and ask and wonder.
Advent isn’t a time to figure out the mystery. It’s a time to revel in it.
We are now in the Advent season. The sub-head of my blog talks about living with God. But there are so many things I wonder about. Matthew (the gospel writer) says that an angel told Joseph to name his “son” Yeshua (through a series of transliterations, we wind up with Jesus in English) which means Yahweh (God) is salvation or God saves. Immediately after that thought, Matthew quotes from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah that the name of the child shall be Emmanuel–God is with us. Thank you, Jon Swanson, for today’s post that sent me down a rabbit warren of internet searches to refresh my memory of all this.
Even though the sub-title of my website talks of living with-God, I didn’t choose that because I know. I chose it because I want to puzzle it out. What does that mean? How do I live it?
I’ve read where the first Century Jesus-followers literally felt Jesus’ presence when they gathered. The small group movement had a tradition of the empty chair–an invitation to fill it with someone new. I think the first Christians must have had that tradition of an “empty chair” where Jesus sat with them. After all, his last words were, “I will be with you always…”
I miss the formal attention to advent of the Methodist church of my youth. But the tree and decorations around the house that my wife prepares every year are a reminder. It’s where I attempt to focus on God With Us amidst all the distractions of the season.
“I will be with you always…” I guess “always” means, well, always. Even now. It’s not a theory. It’s a presence.
“It’s not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do. It’s that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have.”
The photo was taken this morning in northern Illinois. Actually this shouldn’t deter Rudolf and Santa, since the song talks about evening. But, still, this Christmas Eve began warm and foggy for the end of December in the US north.
Everyone who has waited until the last day to purchase those Christmas gifts will be delayed this morning.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in America the Christmas season is less about Advent and more about having too much to do in too little time. Parties, family dinners, meet friends, prepare and mail cards, purchase the best gifts. When Christmas comes we are not celebrating, we are exhausted.
Maybe we should absorb more of the wisdom of the quote I found. Maybe we choose to pack too many things into the limited amount of time. How about chucking most of it and just relaxing and enjoying?
The airplane has reached the vicinity of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. The pilot not actually flying the plane on this leg speaks on the intercom. “We’re in our final approach to O’Hare. Flight attendants please take your seats…”
Things get quiet. You wait. And wait. That final approach feels like time has been suspended and half of the trip is just this final approach.
[I’m sorry. At this point, I cannot get the chorus lyrics of Europe’s eminently bad hard rock song The Final Countdown out of my head.]
Two days before Christmas. This is the final approach. It seems like forever. On the other hand, the pressure of not enough time for gift purchasing and wrapping and meal planning and ingredient buying and last visits.
Maybe our bodies and minds remind us to pause, breathe, refocus on the object of the long approach. The arriving. It is the re-living of the moment of awareness of Jesus entering our world. And remembering the changes following him wrought in our daily living.
Om Malik writes primarily about technology. I’ve followed his writing for more than 20 years. I appreciate his sensitivity and thinking. While researching on the Web regarding the Omicron variation of the SARS-CoV2 virus, he observed, “Information is plentiful; intelligence is scarce.”
Writing today on his blog 300 Words a Day and quoting from his book Saint John of the Mall (I love Jon’s imagination), he wrote this conversation with John the Evangelist, “That gives me theological whiplash,” I said. “What did Jesus say?” “Throughout that time, he was simply saying who he was. But because they were listening to him a phrase at a time and not a paragraph at a time, they were getting distracted, getting stuck.”
Going to rock solid source material and reading “a paragraph at a time” fosters intelligence. Reading spiritual writing watching for the working of the spirit builds on the momentum.
The celebration of Christmas is only a few days away. Advent, the time of preparation for the birth, is drawing to a close. Are you prepared? Have you read again the stories in Luke or John about the coming of Jesus. Not read just a phrase at a time, but read as a complete story?
Pause for a time each remaining day and read for intelligence. Prepare.
Yesterday was a travel day. Ride to the airport. Hang out, then board the plane. Arrive Florida and ride to the hotel. It’s not strenuous, but I am always a bit tired after a travel day. I get a little extra sleep, then I’m ready to go.
Being in Advent season, we hear about Joseph and Mary traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem while she is about nine months pregnant. Walking and perhaps riding a donkey. No wonder she was ready to deliver when they arrived.
They had to be tired. While she is still recovering from childbirth and with Jesus not really a toddler, word comes through the rumor mill that the King wanted to kill the baby. So, another, longer, trip to Egypt for safety.
They had to be tired.
Despite the Christmas card pictures and the serene looks on the faces in the manger scenes as re-enacted, they were no doubt tired and relieved.
When I read stories in the Bible, I like to read them just like stories. Allow my imagination to enter the story and feel myself there. This story was not some philosophical exercise. It was real people facing real expectation, tiredness, worry, relief, worry again, tired again.
But they eventually returned to normal life. We don’t know when. But they did. Just so, we also endure these cycles.
Gary Mintchell
Faith Venture 