When we are waiting

I was once told off for saying Christmas during Advent. I could feel the room chill as the words reverberated around the walls. Life is too short to worry about whether we are getting ahead of ourselves with the seasons. Advent is a time of waiting, but it is waiting for Christmas – so there – said it again! But how are we with waiting? When we are waiting, how do we feel?

In the passage from Isaiah, (Isaiah 2:1-5) where I always think the writer is tilting their head, we have a great vision for the future – the sun arising anew. The context is before the exile of Jerusalem to Assyria and Babylon. The people of Judah were being told that their suffering was down to them. They had refused to recognise God in their lives but Isaiah wanted to highlight what was in store if they would walk on God’s path; for example, God would mediate between warring nations.

Reality

But life didn’t go that way. They didn’t change their minds and continued to suffer. Why was that?

I attend another gathering where each week those that attend come and tell everyone how they are doing: “warts and all”. They’ll perhaps cry, shout, say exactly how they are feeling. Their cries are met with positivity. They are told that together ‘we can do this’. It isn’t mere words. This is a community that is desperate to help each other. And it isn’t a church…

When we are confronted with long periods of waiting around, our minds tend to wander. We consider those things which could affect us. For them it was their greatest threats, just across the border. We can see ‘them’, those that we can’t actually physically see, as a threat. Our imagination runs riot as we imagine this threat as getting ever larger, what can we do? And then we wake up and it’s 4am…

Our own threats may not be across the garden fence, or from political parties whom we don’t agree with, or even foreign nationals whom we think are illegal migrants, but from ourselves. In this image below we see various threats which can affect us but only some have that real opportunity to affect our progress.

They are the ones that we can control.

The threats which we are not able to control are the ones that go rampant at “4am”. That’s when we hear the voices in our head saying “I am inferior“, “I shouldn’t say No to people“, “The more I please people, the more they’ll like me“, and “I will never be any good“. These are scripts: like a tape playing in the background continuously and we gradually absorb those statements as ‘gospel’. But they aren’t Gospel.

Faith

Our faith has one common theme: to bring life, to allow all of us to flourish. The Church, in the long and distant past, has sought to put a great deal of focus upon humankind being condemned before God. This strikingly contrasts with the life of Jesus, don’t you think? We are told that we stand before God in pity, wretched us; when Jesus speaks of us being blessed, that we don’t need to wait for Heaven but Heaven is here on Earth.

Jesus’ message wasn’t about an afterlife fantasy about Heaven but a transformed society here on Earth.

We come to a time in Advent when we are waiting for the celebration of his birth. Spoiler alert – it comes around each year. But what could be different is that transformative change in us. (See the change in Darth Vader below)

Truth Be Told

There’s a song by Matthew West that suggests that we come to church and say “I’m fine” when possibly, probably, we aren’t. Why don’t we let the truth be told?

I attend another gathering where each week those that attend come and tell everyone how they are doing: “warts and all”. They’ll perhaps cry, shout, say exactly how they are feeling. Their cries are met with positivity. They are told that together ‘we can do this’. It isn’t mere words. This is a community that is desperate to help each other. And it isn’t a church…

They have accepted that they focus upon those things that they can change, and together they will.

Here’s Matthew West’s song ‘Truth Be Told’ which reflects on the above thoughts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0Sqb95vsIM

Change

Might we consider taking to heart the words of the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change“. Allow us to be liberated by not being constrained by those things which we might consider threats. We have no power over them – let them go. Focus on what what builds us, yous, plural, up. Rather than over thinking, try just doing.

As a runner the hardest yards are the ones out of the front door. I can out-think myself rather than get out there.

I heard recently that “doing the right thing leads to the right way“. Much of our faith is about thinking, the right thoughts, but what Jesus is asking of us is to…

…do things in our own society which leads to the right way – Jesus’ way.

Christmas Advent

So this Advent, what’s going to change in us? Are we going to meet the expectation of those around us, allow others to control our relationships, our flourishing? Or will we seek to do those things which Jesus seeks, to bring about a transformative change in our society, where we live, in that part of life we have control over?