Mike Rusch
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10 posts tagged Advent
Friday is so far away…
This morning is a Saturday like most Saturdays with everyone still asleep giving me a few moments of quiet. I’m sitting here with my Ethiopian sourced coffee listening to Matt Maher sing about meeting “a man who treated children like they were ambassadors to the kingdom.” It’s pretty cold outside and my iPhone is getting its periodic update to make sure I’m in synch with my life. It seems to be taking a while and maybe that is a signal that I’m more out of synch than I thought.
It is the season of Advent, but I have a personal advent taking place that is taking precedence for the moment. Advent, latin for “coming”, is this season of waiting and preparation (so tells me Wikipedia). However, my heart tells me that Advent is not just waiting, it is waiting with a deep and personal longing for an arrival. It is an ever present thought of soon, very soon, things will be set in place and made right. It is the anxiety that sits at the corners of my thoughts, and it is leaning in at the very moments that “waiting” just isn’t sufficient.
Friday is coming soon, but it is still so far away to someone who isn’t just waiting.
This coming Friday a small stack of papers will cross the desk of someone I’ve never met in a place that I’ve never been to before. In that moment, I will have no voice, no way to communicate my feelings, no way to share the tears that have fallen, no way to express how life is incomplete and no way to show the faces of the others who would do anything to be heard.
It is our prayer that as this small stack of papers is opened for consideration that a divine hand will guide the human hands that must apply their mark, their signature and their approval.
…and while that mark is applied I pray that a little girl who is alone and unknowingly waiting will be filled with a smile and the comfort that her mom and dad are waiting no more.
Because in this advent, a waiting moves to preparation which manifests itself in an arrival. It is an advent that sometimes looks exactly like a mom and dad reaching into a small blue box used a bed to lift out their daughter
Epiphany…appearance, manifestation, Word made flesh
Jan 6th is celebrated as Epiphany which is the time that is traditionally used to mark the ending of Advent when Jesus was revealed to the three kings. So, today it is appropriate to pause for a moment and remember that Jesus was revealed to the world as King
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”
However, my favorite translation of John 1:14 is from the Message
“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”
I think a lot of us understand the “becoming flesh & blood” part, but what about Jesus “moving into the neighborhood”?
The neighborhood that Jesus entered into was broken, hurting and in desperate need of a future and a hope.
However, I contrast that with the neighborhood I moved into. Honestly, my neighborhood looks…well, opposite of that.
My neighborhood has wide streets for the kids to play in, a community pool, a neighborhood watch and regulations to make sure I quickly fix the door on my mailbox so it doesn’t become an eyesore. I am not saying any of these things are bad or that people shouldn’t enjoy such things (we should all enjoy such things).
I am just reflecting my actions and those of this King because if I am to be the foreshadowing of a coming Kingdom maybe it is time that I also “moved into a neighborhood” that is in desperate need of a future and a hope.
A month ago I began asking people why they chose to live in the house they currently occupy. The answers were very interesting…
“it had three bedrooms”
“it was a great neighborhood”
“the property value was increasing”
“great school district”
…all of these things are great, but what I did notice was the lack of answers related to “because it was a neighborhood in need and I wanted to help.” This included my own response to the question I asked.
Epiphany…appearance, dwelling, presence, neighborhood.
maybe…just for a moment (in a very safe place) we could consider how our communities would change if we were the present foreshadowing of this coming Kingdom in the neighborhoods of our community that are in desperate need of a future and a hope.
E. Stanley Jones once wrote “The Word must become flesh or the Word is a vast question mark.”
Thankfully, the Word did become flesh and now there is hope.
The question is now to us today. How does the Word become flesh and blood in our small corner of the world?
Maybe it means we “move into the neighborhood”?
“Advent confronts this corrosion of the heart (cynicism) with the insistence that God has not abandoned the world, hope is real and something is coming”
Rob Bell
Hebrews 13:1-2 “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
I was talking to a friend from my hometown the other day as we reminisced about earlier days of being carefree and fearless. We both went to the same…
“Advent asks the question, what is it for which you are spending your life? What is the star you are following now? And where is that star in its presence radiance in your life leading you? Is it a place that is really comprehensive enough to equal the breadth of the human soul?”
Joan Chittister
“If, focused on the Christ child at the very beginning of the liturgical year (Advent), we do not have the spiritual vision to see meaning there and to develop it within ourselves, there is nothing else on earth that will ever be able to supply it for us”
Joan Chittister
