A Different Season of Waiting (Advent 2020)

 In last year’s December Good News, I wrote about being a Martha Stewart in recovery.  I wrote about seeking stillness in the season of Advent, watching for what God is doing, taking in the growing darkness, turning away from the consumer driven frenzy of the season, letting the call to stillness shape my heart.

 

This year, I don’t have a lot of choices to make in order to find stillness. Sometimes it feels like stillness has been imposed on me. In order to keep those I love safe and well, I will limit my outings, my connections, my actions, my geography.

 

I want to think of all of this as a temporary arrangement – a season in the context of a bigger lifetime. But really, as time has plodded on, I believe it is not a season. It is a shift. A pivot. It might be a hard left turn. It feels a bit like…

 

Everything has changed.

 

The kinds of stillness I have encountered in this season have actually birthed a different kind of restlessness – an awareness that things on the other side of twin pandemics will be different. All of that has me looking at the framework of this season in new ways.

 

I have always been a little bit puzzled by the way that Mark’s gospel opens with John the Baptist offering a baptism of repentance.  He is a strange character on our Advent stage. But this year, his wildness, his passion, his commitment and his conviction resonate. 

 

“One stronger than I am is coming after me. I am not even worthy to bend over and loosen the strap of his sandals.” (Mark 1: 7, CEB)

 

Nothing will be the same.

 

As a mom, the story of Mary being visited by angels has always been poignant to me.  As a young woman engaged to Joseph, what a hard mystery was set before her.  She was pregnant and between a rock and a hard place.  And yet somehow this year, her conviction resonates differently this year.

 

“I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.” (Luke 1: 38, CEB)

 

This changes everything.

 

Restlessness can breed anxiety, I think.  And anxiety causes us to look with suspicion upon others around us.  There is something about Herod’s sputtering concern about a baby – a baby born in abject poverty – that feels different this year. Clearly, he senses a monumental threat to everything he has known and understood about his own position, his own power, his authority. 

 

“Go and search carefully for the child. When you’ve found him, report to me so that I too may go and honor him.” (Matthew 2:8, CEB)

 

As I have mulled the three bolded statements above in my heart, a colleague mentioned that they felt like a breath prayer.  Are you familiar with that – a mantra of sorts used with the breath for centering and connection to God?

On an inhale: Everything has changed.

On an exhale: Nothing will be the same.

On an inhale: This changes everything.

Exhale into contemplation and receptive listening.

 

Sometimes we are convinced that we have to be in a certain place, surrounded by certain things, performing certain actions in order to be in the presence of God. We are convinced that our worship matters most and best in our sanctuary, with our live musicians, with the candles just so and the decorations evolving to mark the progress toward Christmas.

 

The truth is that in this season, all I have at times will be my own breath and God’s abiding presence. 

Everything has changed.

Nothing will be the same.

This changes everything.

 

Will you practice this prayer with me? And what if we practiced without expectation – letting the Holy Spirit move through us along with these phrases.  Let’s see what is born in us as we watch and wait together but apart.

 

May it be so.

Amen