Advent Begins

Today is the first Sunday in the holy season of Advent.  And I want to embrace it this year.

Nineteen years ago I began my call to Karl Road Christian Church on the first Sunday of Advent.  That was by design because it was the start of the new year in that peculiar life of the calendar of the church.  It was the beginning of 11 years of leading worship, Bible studies,  and retreats.  It was the beginning of my last full time call to ministry.

Four years ago I distinctly remember sitting in front of the Christmas Tree  at 1812 White Pine Court pondering the message of Advent.  Chuck was in the bedroom room following his surgery in the beginning of November.  I did not know what the future was going to bring, but my Advent prayer was for living with the awareness of the presence of God in the darkness.  The light in the dark time.  I was held and loved through those difficult days and Chuck left me on Christmas eve.  And God was with me through years of grief and truly brought healing to a broken heart.

And now I sit at a computer  in Galena, Ohio. I am not longer serving as a pastor and my house in Columbus was sold last week.  I am living with and engaged to John Anderson . And the Advent message of this day is HOPE This is the first Sunday of the season and the theme for this week is HOPE.  I have always been a woman of hope and over the years I have learned that hope comes through a life of reflection and expectation. 

I begin this day reading the scriptures of the day and am struck by some of the words and images:

Lift up your heads, O Gates!   and be lifted up O ancient doors!  That the King of Glory may come in

Psalm 24:7

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

Psalm 150:6

...with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.  The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you....."

2 Peter 3:8,9

"Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

Matthew 25:13

It seems to me that the message of this day is WAIT.  And in your waiting look up, praise God, trust God and look for God.  In everything. 

 This Advent I am definitely experiencing new beginnings and a brand new life in a new place with a new partner.  We are not young, so that the miracle of our love is tempered by the reality of aging bodies and minds. Like everyone, we move into an unknown future - but the blessing is that we go together. 

My prayer for myself and for all of us is that WE might be faithful - which I believe means - open, aware, alive, humble, vulnerable, alert and with HOPE.  We celebrate this season that God gave us Jesus so that we might know - intimately - God's presence, God's love and God's call upon our lives.  No matter what stage of life.

May it be so. 

Here is an Advent Prayer by Ted Loder

God of all seasons and senses,
grant us the sense of your timing
to submit gracefully and rejoice quietly in the turn of the seasons.

In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of endings;
children growing, friends leaving, loved ones dying, grieving over,
grudges over, blaming over, excuses over.

O God, grant us a sense of your timing.

In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born—
something right and just and different, a new song,
a deeper relationship, a fuller love—
in the fullness of your time.

O God, grant us the sense of your timing.