Faith Venture

Have you noticed that often when trying to think of something success comes when you stop trying so hard? Trying to remember a name? Stop trying, divert attention. Ten minutes later, “Aha! That’s the name.” 

Maybe you are in your prayer position—sitting in a favorite chair, sitting cross-legged on a cushion, the tradition on your knees posture. You are earnestly trying to receive a message from God. Nothing. Then you take a walk around the neighborhood or at a nearby park. Something comes to you. Probably God speaking in the wind or sun.

Sometimes we may slip into a mood of taking counsel from the voices feeding our anxiety, particularly those who benefit from our worry. Get off social media and TV news. See the above taking a walk therapy.

Sometimes we have friends of acquaintances who have more opinion than perspective. Rather than taking guidance just nod slowly and then go, well, for that walk.

Matthew begins his story of the birth of Jesus with God talking to Joseph through an angel in his dream. Joseph listened and acted. Luke begins his with an angel with a message for Mary from God. She listened. She acted.

God is weird. He comes to us in the most unexpected moments in the most unexpected ways. We cannot force it. Therefore to constant advice about being ever vigilant, like the story of the bridesmaids waiting for the husband’s arrival. They were prepared (extra oil, just in case) and vigilant.

Here we are. Almost at the end of Advent. Still vigilant I hope. Still expectant. Welcoming a new presence of God. Are you ready?

I have been much impacted by the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting for Godot. It is a two-act play where two people (often portrayed as tramps) meet while waiting for someone named Godot to show up. He never does. But the conversations are deep and meaningful.

Many people throughout humankind must have thought that they were waiting for someone who never shows up. Maybe a parent? Maybe a lover? Maybe God?

Hugh Laurie, English actor, comedian, writer, musician, noted, “It’s a terrible thing, I think, in  life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”

Here is another kind of waiting. It is the waiting to act before we feel ready. We are waiting to write the Great American Novel, but never get the pen or laptop out and begin writing. We will be a pastor or teacher or business leader—someday when we are ready. Some things we should not sit around waiting for the time to be right. I have seen people waiting for permission—from someone, anyone. We must seize the moment and do something.

Then there is waiting in anticipation. This I like the Jewish people waiting for The Anointed One, meaning King, Messiah in their language. Most of them pictured David returned to kick out the foreigners and re-establish the empire. Not being alive in the first century, I have no idea how prevalent this waiting, indeed longing, was among the Jewish people at large. Definitely it was among the more spiritually attuned. I have read histories that described that era as one of great spiritual longing. The success of Paul among the non-Jews shows that that longing was more widespread than just among the Jews.

I think of the stories in Luke about Anna and Simeon waiting at the Temple convinced that the baby who was the Anointed One would be brought to be dedicated. They were there not just years but decades. Waiting. And then Joseph and Mary brought little Joshua (Jesus in Greek and now English). And they knew. How? God obviously spoke to them. The waiting was over.

Advent as a season of the year to recreate that waiting, but instead of a political king a man who points us toward God with the invitation to enter God’s kingdom the kingdom of heaven. “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (around us),” he said at the beginning of his ministry. Turn your life around because you, too, can live with God in the Kingdom. Beginning now.

We wait now. Then, we go and do for the wait is over.

Yesterday I played with words. I liked the name and marketing of an old software company, Think and Do and turned it into a spiritual formation challenge—Faith and Do.

That in itself was playing with another pair of words, usually set up as an either/or statement. This has been argued and worried over for more than 1,000 years—faith versus works is how it’s usually portrayed.

My brain looks at all dichotomies presented to it and automatically begins to look for either both/and or neither alternatives.

Maybe someone presents you with the choice of attending this megachurch or or that megachurch. Perhaps you look and decide neither. There is another alternative of a smaller house fellowship much like the early church described in Acts.

People in the gospels were presented with an early either/or choice—John (the Baptiser) or Jesus.

Actually, it was not necessarily a choice. John had a ministry to prepare the way for Jesus. (I cannot think those words without hearing the song from Godspell.) John challenged people to change their ways and prepare their hearts for the coming of the Messiah.

Jesus came and built on that momentum. He showed how to live in this new Kingdom of God once the way was prepared. There’s more to the story, of course, but this will do for now.

We can think of this remaining couple of weeks of Advent as a time of John. We prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus, celebrated on Christmas Day. First this, then that. Once we have prepared for the journey we must then actually travel.

This is a time of recreating that preparation for many of us. For others it may be the first preparation. That’s Advent.

But then we must actually go. Like Jesus left us with—a commandment to love God and our neighbor and a commission to go and make disciples. We celebrate this on Christmas Day. Then the days following, we go.