advent scraps
So awful car troubles aside...I really have been thinking about Advent a lot lately...I love the fact that there is a period of time set aside to anticipate celebrating, to anticipate coming.
Advent is both active and quiet waiting. We cannot make the time go faster than it will, so we hold the stillness, knowing each day will pass as the last. Yet, we do more than prepare, we observe milestones--lighting a candle each Sunday, building the first flame into greater and greater illumination as we draw nearer to the Christ child.
That I like this waiting is odd--because my life would mostly demonstrate the opposite--that I enjoy waiting like a dead car battery. I look toward the future with restless preparation; I "martha" the smallest detail, thinking I'll overlook something to complete the end, forgetting to "mary" on the way, to recognize that Jesus is saying something I need to sit at his feet awhile to hear.
Maybe it's because in Advent the waiting is celebrated...the anticipation almost looked forward to: small scraps of the joy to come are scattered in the journey there. But learning to wait, to value and treasure the waiting, is hard--the blessings are often harder to see: the preparations seem superfluous; the inaction apathetic. All the pressure of the past pushes into something new, all the gravity of the future pulls to accelerate forward, always forward.
Advent is both active and quiet waiting. We cannot make the time go faster than it will, so we hold the stillness, knowing each day will pass as the last. Yet, we do more than prepare, we observe milestones--lighting a candle each Sunday, building the first flame into greater and greater illumination as we draw nearer to the Christ child.
That I like this waiting is odd--because my life would mostly demonstrate the opposite--that I enjoy waiting like a dead car battery. I look toward the future with restless preparation; I "martha" the smallest detail, thinking I'll overlook something to complete the end, forgetting to "mary" on the way, to recognize that Jesus is saying something I need to sit at his feet awhile to hear.
Maybe it's because in Advent the waiting is celebrated...the anticipation almost looked forward to: small scraps of the joy to come are scattered in the journey there. But learning to wait, to value and treasure the waiting, is hard--the blessings are often harder to see: the preparations seem superfluous; the inaction apathetic. All the pressure of the past pushes into something new, all the gravity of the future pulls to accelerate forward, always forward.
posted by Mandy at 6:58 PM
1 Comments:
hmm. Reminds me of what I've read from j. edwards--everything on the way to the "end," which is what God ultimately values, is also valuable...because of the value of that end. Mundane moments are valued because of what they are, and yet what they are also leading towards. Something about the irrelevance of time, and God knowing it all, doing it all, being it all...at once and loving it for its intricate beauty.
Maybe you'd have to read JE for yourself. Waiting "done" well is still hard.
Love ya Mandy
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