Celebrating and Waiting
It’s about halfway through advent this year—the season commemorating God’s arrival in the incarnation of Christ and which also points towards his impending return as the king of the cosmos.
My own church’s heritage has not often paid heed to the traditional church calendar. And yet, things come back around, and as many in my generation have explore seasons such as Advent, Lent, and Pentecost, we have rediscovered their usefulness for training us in the way of Jesus.
For my own part, I’ve found it very useful to have a time of sustained reflection on Jesus’s coming into the world. This year I’ve meditated on the tension present between our proclamation of God’s continual presence and our proclamation of his return—Is he here, or is not here but coming back?
Perhaps it is mostly a matter of our perception. We catch glimpses of God’s presence, but are largely inattentive to the various ways God might be seen—God is present, but unnoticed. Many of our spiritual disciplines are meant to open us to noticing and experiencing God in the world. When we do, it is beautiful and staggering. But it doesn’t happen nearly enough for us—even when we think we are really looking. We are left longing for more.
Perhaps we have to admit, eventually, that God’s presence in our world is still frustratingly veiled. It may not be within our capacity to perceive God’s presence continually in the world, because he has somehow obscured that presence just enough as to recede from our vision. We don’t really know why. All our reasoning on it—at least all I know about—leaves us unsatisfied.
God remains with us. I hold that conviction.
And yet, we await God’s return—a moment when God’s presence will be unveiled.We long and yearn for the light which illumines all things, for the murky dark to be disbanded.
This is a season of leaning into that tension. It is a season for claiming the presence of God—and reclaiming our identity as a waiting people.
For those who share my people’s unfamiliarity with the keeping of advent, I’m happy to share the document I created to introduce the season.
