Here we are a whole week into Advent and we’re already up
to our ears, eyes, nose in just about everything except the gift that is
coming. Christmas is a celebration of
something so far beyond our logic, beyond our sentiments, beyond our cookies
and tinsel that it is ridiculous to even consider the limits of our frenzy as
we approach the experiences described in the Gospels. And the ordeal of our celebration leaves us
with anything but hope, peace, joy, or love.
Yet we yearn for Christmas. And as we reach toward something more than
tinsel perhaps the yearning itself, reaching toward something more, something
beyond all the dead ends that we’ve lived with, invested in, been disappointed
by, perhaps that yearning is what the
holy day is about.
Perhaps the words of the prophet of ‘Comfort ye my
people…’ reach toward more than treaties and disarmament. Perhaps they point toward the hurt we carry
away from hard words from a friend, from Christian leaders forgetting vows of
reconciliation, from people using love and punishment in the same sentence,
from all the moments we’ve neglected the least of these.
Prophetic visions see far beyond this or that
moment. They reveal a landscape that is
founded in a reality beyond time, bound in mystery. They speak truth that cannot be pinned down
with calendars or three dimensional measurements. If we to hear the prophet speak, really hear
him we need to look beyond our small specificities into the cloudy places of
the heart. Out there where we yearn and
dare to believe that the angels sing to us.
And ye beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are
bending low
Who toil along the climbing way, with painful steps and
slow
Look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the
wing
Oh rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.
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