Presence // Anticipation
Advent this year, feels more real for some (probably convicting) reason.
We wait like Mary in the pained anticipation of this birth.
If we can find it, or hear it, there is a groan in our bellies for deliverance, something deep within us is about to be born. So we wait, calming the fluttering corners of our lives, iron the creases from our skirts, tap our tose on the tiles. Preparing our homes for the presence. Quieting our otherwise boisterous self-will.
Because after another year, we need this birth to come. We look to the heavens and we look in our selves- we need this birth to come.
We are floating here without it. There is no rest for the waiting.
There is no conclusion, there is really no beginning yet. I think about where I just was a few months ago- unknowing, without control, and I think this is Bethlehem.
Shaded by the faithfulness of Yahweh, burdened by the labor pains of some distant, future redemption. All the while, hovering.
The waiting is usually the worst, so we usually forgo it. But what if we took it on? What if we covered ourselves in Advent? Where would we live and how? Would our hearts be muddled in the tension of time? Would they be strangely content?
I think we would just be present- to the pain and to the renewal.
