Advent in August

 

What are you waiting for?  That question can be asked in so many ways, with different tenors, textures, and tones.  Go ahead, say those five words aloud, each time, emphasizing a different word.  When I say to myself, “What are you waiting for?,” it makes my shy soul curl up like a frightened turtle.  Emphasizing the word, “what” is dripping with judgment ~ dripping like humidity on a hot Florida August day.  But when I gently say, almost with a whisper, “What are you waiting for?”  Try that right now, softly/gently say those words so you can barely hear, emphasizing the word, “you”.  When I do that, I sense curiosity, openness, and wonderment about where/when/how am I waiting?  Maybe today you are waiting for the doctor to call, words from others that squall, for resolution of the things you haul, and trying to dust yourself off from the fall.  Everyone, as Dr. Seuss prophetically proclaimed, is waiting.

 

In the church calendar, we have a season called Advent that is about spiritually waiting.  These are the four Sundays before Christmas Day.  During Advent, we light four candles, one each Sunday, that we say help us prepare for God’s grand arrival in a barn on Christmas Eve.  We call the candles: hope, peace, joy, and love.  These are audacious names given the external evidence of the news you read each day.  Hope?  Really, in a world of deep divisions, where we struggle to know what is real?  Or maybe we’ve been taught and told to delay joy until we’ve earned/deserve it ~ like God’s joy is some vacation that we’ve got to work a certain number of hours before we can take.  Or how do you practice peace in the face of war and violence?  

 

The church year cannot be confined by a calendar.  Just because Advent falls at the end of the year, the themes of Advent can visit you no matter the date or weather outside your window.  Advent offers us the meta-narrative of both waiting and preparing.  The waiting of Advent isn’t passive, nor is it scurrying, hurrying, flurrying around like we must look busy because Jesus is coming!!  However, the culture at Christmas is very much preaching a gospel of more and cramming another party/event/concert/gathering into your calendar before this year is finished.  Prayerful waiting, watching your life for God to show up in the least likely place (because if God decides a barn is the setting/scene for a grand entry- doesn’t that give us pause for how God continues to show up in our lives?).  God comes in the vulnerability of a baby.  God’s arrival doesn’t stop all oppression immediately; Caesar is still on the throne as Mary nurses Jesus.  God’s arrival doesn’t immediately right all wrongs. 

 

God moves slowly, intentionally, thoughtfully ~ like we are waiting for a turtle. 

 

What are you waiting for right now in this moment, in this season, on this day?  May that prayerful question meet you in the Advent of August this week.  Amen.

Known

 

Transcending, transitioning, and transforming One, as we explore how You know us fully, help us be brave and bold in claiming our lives.  Help us let go of feelings of shame or blame, knowing that those are human responses.  There is no brokenness You cannot redeem, repair, and restore.  Help us know the power of forgiveness of others and ourselves.  Remind us that forgiving is an act of love that is needed in a world that is too caught up in eye-for-eye justice, and even worse.  God, we are determined to win and show that we are boss, regardless of who the bomb kills or words wound.  We are far from Eden.  This homelessness creates restlessness within us, like the Prodigal Son who found himself in the muck of life.  Call us back to ourselves.  Call us back to You.  Call us back to our connections which are where love can be expressed, explored and experienced in new ways.  Bless us with Your presence and peace this day and throughout this month.  Amen. 

Known Part 4

 

I recently heard a person say, “Most of us deeply want to belong, but we settle for fitting in.”  We want to be fully known but are concerned that such vulnerability is unsustainable, impractical, and impossible.  The Psalmist offers a different perspective.  You are known.  All of you.  Whether this causes you to exhale deeply, shift uncomfortably, or question how that is even possible, all those reactions/responses are appropriate.  For me, this means that when I discover something about myself as if for the first time.  For example my need for perfectionism can feel like I am still trying to impress my elementary school teacher for a gold star on my paper.  I trust that God knows this.  God holds this alongside me.  God invites us to be honest with ourselves without any harshness.  What is one truth about yourself you’ve discovered or rediscovered in the past month?  Maybe you discovered that the gospel of your family growing up was to cut corners and get ahead at any cost.  Maybe you discovered that the values of growing up still linger even though you are thousands of miles away from your place of birth.  Maybe you recognize now that you’ve been carrying unresolved grief around a rupture in a relationship, because when you wrote the person’s name in a circle weeks ago, tears came to your eye.  Maybe…you fill in the blank.  The mystery of your life is held by God.  You can continually rediscover your life as you open yourself to connect with God.  The threads that run from places to people to events and experiences have been knit together by the One whose wisdom is deeper and wider than any human being can imagine.  Let this reassurance embrace you and remind you, God will never let you go.  Amen.

Known Part 3

 

If you look in your Bible at Psalm 139 you might notice this Psalm is attributed to David.  While many tend to have a positive view of David, he was not always the hero of the story.  There is a time he was attracted to a married woman, named Bethsheba, so he sent her husband to the front lines of a war where he was killed (2 Samuel 11).  Eek!  You can’t make this stuff up, it is in the Bible.  Imagine David praying the words below:

 

O Lord, You have searched me
    and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I get up;
    You understand my thought from far off.
³ You search my path and my lying down
    and are aware of all my ways.
⁴ For there is not a word on my tongue,
    but behold, O Lord, You know it fully.

⁵ You put Yourself behind and before me,
    and keep Your hand on me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is lofty, and I cannot fathom it.

 

Now imagine you praying these words when you do/say something you wish you hadn’t done or said.  After you called someone a name or lashed out in anger at someone who just happened to be standing there or blamed someone else for your brokenness.  Imagine God knowing not just the good parts of life, but the ones we tend to keep hidden in cardboard boxes in cobwebbed corners of our souls, hoping/praying no one goes back there!  Not family, friends, yourself, or even God!

 

But the Psalmist says God does and will go to every corner of our being!  God knows our movements.  God knows us better than we know ourselves.  God surrounds us, which means God can sustain us.  To be fully known is both our most heartfelt prayer and sometimes our deepest fear!  Re-read that sentence.  We want to be known, but we also tell ourselves that if someone really knew us, they wouldn’t love us.  So, there is the contradiction.  Here is the truth: God does love you.  Paul picks up on this in Romans 8 ~ nothing separates us from the love of God.  What is your reaction?  Honestly.  Do you still want to object and argue that God couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t love you?  How is that going?  God loves you fully, unconditionally, and unceasingly.  Let this promise take hold of your heart on this day and every day.  Amen.

Known Part 2

 

This week you are laying down your summer homework alongside Psalm 139.  Please remember, this is not for a grade!  Please remember, even if your rectangles of places are half-drawn and your circles of people incomplete, and you haven’t even started on the starlit moments of life, God is there.  This is what the Psalmist is singing to your shy soul.  Hear the opening words of Psalm 139 again, this time from the Message paraphrase.  Read these words aloud so you can hear as if God is saying/singing/blessing you with these words:

 

God, investigate my life;
    get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
    even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
    I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
    before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
    then up ahead and you’re there, too—
    your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
    I can’t take it all in!

 

I am struck by that last sentence ~ I can’t take it all in!  Even after examining and exploring the various components of my life, even after having new insights into my life, there are so many mysteries.  I sometimes feel like, rather than a masterpiece of art, my life is like Legos scattered across the carpet by a toddler.  Even though we curate and carefully construct our lives in scrapbooks or Instagram posts, behind the scenes and screenshots, there are so many emotions.  Because our minds protest and insist that everything be neat and tidy, we tend to fill in the uncertainties of life ~ our own and others' lives ~ with a false sense of confidence.  We say, “Oh I know exactly what you are feeling,” to someone who is grieving.  But everyone’s grief is different, unique as their fingerprint.  On the one hand, when you say you know how the other feels, you are trying to connect.  On the other hand, not everyone has the right to hear your opinion/thoughts.  This is holy for us to remember.  Recall from last week that powerfully challenging line from Ecclesiastes: “A time to keep silent.”  The advocates among us think, “Wait, you can’t stay silent/quiet now.  We have to say something!!  Do something!!  Get your cape because we are off to save the day.”  Notice the wisdom writer of Ecclesiastes doesn’t say that you should always, forever and forever, stay quiet or silent.  The writer didn’t say, “Just stand on the sideline and don’t speak until spoken to.”  Rather, quiet can be God’s first language.  As the mystics say, there is a reason that the words silent and listen share the same letters!!  When we are quiet, we can listen to what others are really saying, let God get a word in edgewise, maybe hear our own shy soul, and possibly enjoy the stillness without our addiction to perpetual motion.  Let the psalm above wrap around you, hold you, and remind you that God loves all of you.  Full stop.  Period.  Amen.

Known Part 1

 

For the past month, you have listened to your one wild and precious life.  You have charted people, places, experiences, and encounters.  You have been time traveling as you realized your parents preached a gospel of what was expected of you.  Your family of origin served up a story alongside the mashed potatoes at meals every night.  Your teachers, friends, and culture have taken the red editorial pen to mark up your life.  Then culture told you that you were responsible/accountable for authoring your one story ~ never mind the fact that some conditions were set in stone ~ like where you were born and who you were born to. 

 

There is no new assignment to add to your chart/artwork of your life this week.  Rather, I invite you to breathe and be.  Take a deep breath and slowly exhale.  Take in the oxygen of God’s love, letting it warm your heart and tickle your pinkie toes.  Now exhale all the toxins of carbon dioxide that have been collected within you.  Exhale that comment from that person who has been living rent-free in your mind.  Exhale that expectation that you must be perfect, know all the answers, and come up with the best joke for your sermon.  Exhale the waiting for the doctor’s appointment and the frustration that others are not who you want them to be (because we are not who we want to be either).  Exhale pain.  Exhale the unfinishedness of this life. 

 

Breathe and be.

 

Slowly read, pray, these words ~ say them aloud so that your shy soul can hear them. 

 

O Eternal One, You have explored my heart and know exactly who I am;
² You even know the small details like when I take a seat and when I stand up again.
    Even when I am far away, You know what I’m thinking.
³ You observe my wanderings and my sleeping, my waking and my dreaming,
    and You know everything I do in more detail than even I know.
⁴ You know what I’m going to say long before I say it.
    It is true, Eternal One, that You know everything and everyone.
⁵ You have surrounded me on every side, behind me and before me,
    and You have placed Your hand gently on my shoulder.
⁶ It is the most amazing feeling to know how deeply You know me, inside and out;
    the realization of it is so great that I cannot comprehend it.

⁷ Can I go anywhere apart from Your Spirit?
    Is there anywhere I can go to escape Your watchful presence? (Psalm 139)

 

Which word/verse/idea leapt off the screen and landed (maybe with a thud) in your mind or heart or soul?  I know for me, it is, “You (God) even know the small details (of my life)”.  My first response is, “Eek…that means God know what I said to that driver who cut me off in traffic.”  My second response is, “Can God really love all my warts/wants/wounds, the ones I keep hidden from others (and myself)?”  And my third response is, “Maybe this is what is so amazing about grace!”.  Hold this passage and let it hold you, listen to how the psalmist, centuries ago invited people to let God hold our whole lives.  Amen.  

Seasonality of God ~ Prayer

 

Wisdom-writing, song-singing, silence-tending, presence-sharing God, meet us here and now in this messy moment where breaking down and building up are happening in us and around us.  Meet us here as we try to tend to the rips in the fabric of life, even as stress creates another hole for us to mend.  In a moment when hate is too loud, and love is too easily missed or dismissed.  God, meet us with Your presence.  Let us sit in the mystery and marvel of life in ways that open us to You.  Continue to offer us grace, peace, hope, mercy, justice, and love that makes our wounded spirits whole.  Even in our blessed brokenness and uncertainty, help us reach out in very human ways to others.  Be with us at this moment and every day this month.  Amen.