December Blog 2024
The season of Advent started yesterday, as did the first day of winter. As many of you will know I struggle with the winter months, and I am always sad that Advent is kidnapped by Christmas. I can understand why people are keen to put up their Christmas trees and sparkly lights inside and out, to bring some winter cheer to what may have been a challenging year. But Advent is important to those who take the liturgical journey seriously. Derived from a Latin root, Advent means ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’ and is a season of quiet and joyful expectancy, as we prepare for the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ and a time of reflection pointing us to Christ’s second coming at the end of time. It is a season of waiting, watching, listening, and a time of hope, joy and love. Through the darkness of Advent, we move towards the light of the Incarnation – God in us – Immanuel.
People find the thought of patient waiting, watching and listening hard, and so take a huge leap across this season and plonk themselves straight into the midst of Christmas. But I think we miss something when we do this. Just as much as I would love to leap across the season of winter straight into summer, if I did, I would miss so much.
As I have reflected over this year, it has been challenging personally, having lost 3 very good friends, two far too early in their lives. I lost two months of my sabbatical because of Bella’s accident, and having to nurse her back to health. And there have been challenges in my ministry, and in the life of St. Mark’s which I have had to face, and they have been very painful to bear. Ministry can be a very lonely place, even when surrounded by a wonderful family of God.
So, I have had to return over and over again back to our loving, compassionate, forgiving and loving God, in the person of Jesus Christ. The same one who was happy to take a nap in a boat when the storm was raging all around! I feel I have been in that boat and cried out with the disciples, ‘don’t you care Master, if I drown’?
But I have also experienced that welcome to come to him and eat with him, and be embraced by the Trinity. I have gone back to that wonderful Rublev Icon where there is a space for each one of us to sit with them, to wait, to watch, to listen, and to be ………
In my Advent reading and reflection this morning it was suggested that most of our lives are spent focussing on these three verbs: ‘to want, to have and to do. Craving, clutching and fussing on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious – plane, and are kept in perpetual unrest. Rather than focussing on the fundamental verb ‘to be’. Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a healthy spiritual life. My Spiritual Director has encouraged me to find some space to grieve the losses of this year, and I intend to use Advent as a time to sit, reflect, watch, wait, pray, listen, in anticipation of what God has waiting for me personally, and what His plans are for St. Mark’s in the coming year. It is hard to sit in the darkness, in the unknown, in the waiting; far easier to look to what is greener and lighter on the other side. But Jesus had to go through the pain and suffering, and death itself, before His resurrection, but I am seriously jumping ahead to Easter here!!
I feel Jesus is calling us all to rest awhile this Advent, to accept His invitation to come to His table, to find our own space and place within the Trinity; in anticipation of the joy, hope and light that awaits us this Christmastide. Hard with all that is going on already in this month of December outside and inside the church – but we have a choice. We can prioritise time with the Trinity or get entangled with the fanatic festive frenzy. Join me in the former I pray.
