Advent Is a Hopeful Season

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent, the four weeks in the Christian season leading up to Christmas. In recent years this has become my favorite liturgical season, a time of sacred waiting and longing and anticipation. Not for Christmas, but for The Messiah, God-With-Us, the fulfillment of promises made to humankind that God is and will always be with and for us. Advent brings me hope, even at a very challenging time of year. 

I love the music of Advent and while many people are frustrated with too much to do and not enough shopping or baking or decorating days before Christmas, I am disappointed we only have four Sundays to sing some of these haunting melodies. They tug at my heart.

I find comfort in the readings, especially those beautiful poetic words from the prophet Isaiah. These readings are filled with promise but also with warnings, like in this past Sunday’s Gospel (Matt. 24:37-44), that we must stay awake, be alert, that God can come at any time.  “Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. . . . So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”

This warning is something I have been acutely aware of for seven years. You do not know when, in a heartbeat, your life will change forever.  These changes can bring great pain and sadness, but they can also lead to transformation if you are willing to allow God to work with you.  God comes to us through pain as well as through love and beauty; if we are awake and alert, God will always be ready to show us divine presence.

In my own life, transformation is an ongoing process; it comes in fits and starts, two steps forward, one step back.  If I focus on what I have lost, on what is missing in my life – which is a very easy trap to fall into – I become mired in sadness and hopelessness. Today while walking Charlie I thought about how my mind seizes on negative thoughts, gnaws on them until they consume me.  In dog training, when a puppy is chewing on something it shouldn’t, the command is usually “Leave it!”  I decided I might try that on myself: when my mind goes to those sad places and I don’t have time to process the thoughts using Byron Katie’s “Work,” I can tell myself to “leave it.” Then I distract my mind with something more positive: the fascinating clouds, the beautiful leaves, a flock of geese overhead.

Gratitude is a good way to distract myself. As I was raking up the huge quantities of leaves in my yard this morning and putting them into the yard debris bin, I thought about how nice it would be to have someone to help with this major fall task.  I tried to imagine what my life would be like now if John had not been killed. And I realized my life would be quite different, maybe better, but I don’t know that for sure. I thought about the new friends and experiences I’ve had these past seven years – including publishing a book this summer – that most likely would never have come into my life if John had not died. I thought about coming to know myself, finding courage and strength and a different kind of joy. Although there have been some losses, there have also been wonderful gifts in my life.

So I continue to live with hope – not expectation, which can bring disappointment – but hope. Next Sunday’s reading from Isaiah 11:1-10 is one of my very favorite scriptural citations:

On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,
and from his roots a bud shall blossom. . . .

Justice shall be the band around his waist,
and faithfulness a belt upon his hips.
Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall browse together,
with a little child to guide them.

How can I not have hope when I have been promised that God is faithful? As Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes in his daily reflection: “In Jesus’ birth God was already saying that it was good to be human, and God was on our side, and on the side of all creation.”  If God is on our side, how can we not have joy?