RevGalBlogPal's new book, A Light Blazes in the Darkness will be my Advent meditation this year. What I would like to do is blog something every day in response to their words. It seems appropriate that I do this online as the nature of their community is online. There is a meditation for each day of Advent written by a member of the webring. I will link to that specific person as well if I can uncover their url. Since today is Monday and Advent began yesterday, I'll post on the first two entries.
November 27 - The First Sunday of Advent
Prepare the way, O Zion,
Your Christ is drawing near!
Let every hill and valley
A level way appear.
Greet One who comes in glory,
Foretold in sacred story.
O blest is Christ who came
In God's most holy name.
Isaiah 40:3-5, Luke 3:4-6 (paraphrased)
Apstraight syas this:
Being prepared means being ready to handle effectively whatever situation you find yourself in. Handling it so it doesn't take you away from where you want to be and who you want to be while you are there.I am folding thi idea together with an experience I had Saturday evening outside of the local vido store. I came outside and spoke briefly with two people. One was a gentleman I have met on several occasions at parties. He and his wife live in the neighborhood. They have a new baby. He was getting signatures for an attempt to force city hall to allow the neighborhood to engage in a conversation about bringing a military academy to a local high school. Both of us are against the idea, but what is most frustrating is that the school board and the mayor's office has not allowed the community to speak in a public forum. As I said to my aquaintance "At least give us a chance to be convinced of your position."Of course, this is exactly the opposite of what it means to prepare for the arrival of Jesus the Christ...The Coming of Christ is not something we can handleor absorb. It is Impossible! I is exactly the kind of thing that blows us off our perches and takes us to places we would never, when we were our former selves, have thought of going. Thanks be to God.
The other person I spoke to is a homeless woman who sells Streewise, the city's homeless' newspaper. I spoke with her obly briefly. She seemed very surprised that I would stop to buy a paper from her. It is tempting to imagine why she was surprised.
The connection I am making with the Advent meditation is that, perhaps especially clear in a large city, there are communal ways that we attempt to prepare ourselves for change, for transition, and conflict. But there is no way to prepare ourselves for what God can bring. There is no way to anticipate that kind of judgment. The gospels make suggestions...even clear ones. So we speak out against oppression and do what we can to feed the poor. The tradition of the church offers disciplines. So, we meditate on the scriptures. And thes ideas should be heeded. But all they can do, the best they can do, is prepare the ground for the seed that God will sow. God always comes in the unexpected, the unforseen. That God is coming is known. That we will be changed is known. But we do not know the day, or the hour or how we as a city will be changed. Can Chicago become Zion? How will we be changed?
November 28
For Songbird, God comes as a Shepherd in Advent. Her past understandings of God have been challenged. Who she belived God to be had to be stretched and grow "three times" in order for God to make a change in her life. For God to meet her in her grief, in her anxiety, she had to come to recognise God's face. And what she discovered was that her ability to recognise God was challenged and pushed.
I wonder how many people experience this kind of growth in their faith. I imagine that many do. And I think that this shift is often God's own doing. I cannot speak for Songbird, but I have experienced in my own life and in the lives of those I have served in the hospital, that when we pray for God's healing, often we have to lose our preconceptions about God to receive tha healing. Perhaps in the midst of a crisis this is especially the case. Fear of the punishing, angry God gives way to the reception of a gentle Shepherd. The absent clock-maker gives way to a present Spirit who is at work through the hands that heal. A silent God speaks through the voices of loved ones. All this change (struggle?) is a sign of God's grace and God's desire for our health and well-being. These transitions are holy work and holy will.
Posted by tripp at November 28, 2005 09:02 AM