Advent comes, not in spite of this moment in time but precisely because of it.
Advent comes, not in spite of this moment in time but precisely because of it.
Reimagining Advent :: Week Two
Introduction
This is the second part in a series of Advent Sunday night meditations for paid subscribers to Field Notes. It includes scripture selections, a brand new essay, practices to consider, and reflection questions for conversation or journalling as well as opening and closing blessings as well as an audio reading.
Advent is the Church’s way of observing and remembering, of marking the truth we believe that God came to be with us once, and God is still with us, and God is coming again to set all things right. Tonight Christians all around the world – in churches and in homes, in refugee camps and on the streets, alone or together – light the second candle symbolizing Peace to open Advent.
Secret Field Notes Podcast Alert
You can listen to me read this reflection for you as part of The Secret Field Notes Podcast, Episode 32. (This is a private podcast feed of occasional Field Notes essays for paid subscribers.)
Catching Up
Advent Week 1: Let the Darkness Gather, We’ll Make a Home There
and/or the podcast version, if you prefer to listen
Take a moment to light the candle for Hope from last week and then the candle for Peace for this week. You should have two candles burning for tonight.
Opening Prayer
Creator, Saviour, Spirit, tonight we light a candle for peace. It feels a bit futile, to be honest with you. What is one more candle in the face of this long dark night? But here we are, lighting the candle, bearing witness, preparing for peace with you. We’re glad you love children, please help us to remain more childlike, too. We could use some impossible peace right now.
You came on that long-ago night with the herald of “peace on earth, goodwill to humanity” and even now, we dare to lay our hearts on the altar of that promise. Sometimes it feels like the riskiest thing in the world to believe you, but we want to believe, we do. We trust you, God, we trust your love for us and for this whole exhausted burning beautiful planet.
We want to believe that peace making matters, we want to believe that peace is possible. We crack open our chest to that hope, sneak past our cynicism through our imagination and give us good work to do.
May we wrap our arms around all that is hurting and dying and suffering in your beloved world.
Meet with us at the centre of our yearning, Ancient Love, we are waiting. Keep the candle light in our hearts burning like a lantern.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” - Jesus, Matthew 5:9
That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. “I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way Scripture puts it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we’ll be a choir—not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus! So reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory. Jesus did it; now you do it! - Romans 5:3-7, The Message
Meditation
By the time you get to the middle of your life, you have logged a few dozen spiritual awakenings and at least half that many versions of yourself.
In fact, you can look back over your life and point to certain moments like signposts and say, there, that one, I was different from then on. This was a fork in the road, perhaps you didn’t recognize it then but here you are, changed. You were one person before that moment, someone else afterwards. Maybe you were the only one who noticed but the transformation, the shift, was no less seismic.
When we speak of this transformation, sometimes we are pointing to a pile of ash where we burned, other times we are pointing to the phoenix in the sky still rising and glorious.