advent

Advent is a season that has become very dear to me in the past few years. I suppose I've sort of always known of its existence,  even separated as I was from it, not having grown up on a liturgical calendar; my mother was conscious to inform us of the purpose of advent: what it was and why it mattered. But in my adult life I have been drawn to it in a new way. I think that as I have experienced different losses, my soul has yearned for a time that reflects the loss, the yearning, even the darkness, the precursor to what we are all familiar with: the celebration of Christmastide. To celebrate Christmas without thinking of its sister (Advent) seems to me like living in a world in which the main story has been forgotten. 

This year, myself and 3 dear friends formed a prayer group called "1234." We all purpose to pray for each other each Monday at 12:34pm. It has been a sweet fellowship and a blessed fellowship in which God continually reveals His faithfulness and has made His joy to be on display. My sweet cousin gifted each of us in the prayer group one of the books that is pictured below, "Glad and Golden Hours" by Lanier Ivester, an Advent and Christmastide companion! How timely! How I know I will treasure the words, recipes, and atmosphere that it has already begun to plant in our home. Lanier has a gift with words, which are like a balm to a girl like me, at times, "so weary worn and sad.*" Like my grandfather's beloved hymn writer, I find in Christ my resting place, and He has made me glad! These glad and golden hours are not without grief, loss, or sorrow. No, it is precisely because of the broken world we live and love in that Advent and Christmas are so dear. What better story to dwell on, during days and nights of sorrow? What better hope to celebrate, when your world crumbles down around you, like a beautiful but empty and delicate glass palace, crashing into a million pieces? What other comfort would bring meaning to a dark and bitter world, waiting in cold, frozen anticipation of spring: tempted to despair lest the warmth of long summer days might never return again?

The joy of Christmas is a deeper, more far reaching, soul wrenching, and wide spreading joy that Child Samantha never dared to celebrate or imagine. While the child-joy of Christmas remains eternally sweet, tender and dear to me, something I hope I never forget to remain in; the mature joy of Advent and Christmas are now there to grow in to. The truth is that children have experienced Christmas day orphaned, lonely, without present to open or cheering song to sing. Many have been on painful and lonely roads. Many right now may be far from home, lost, dark, and looking for a light. The adjacent truth is that no one has ever lived through a Christmas apart from the hope of the incarnation,  without the visible light of the Christ-child, present, eternal, here with us. Every day, every moment, but also, each year at Christmas, he invites us to open our eyes, to accept the gift of himself to us. My prayer with this letter is that we each open our hearts to him in a transformative trust, and that we remember that most precious story of how an infant born of glory burst through the darkness of our gritty,  unbelieving world, to ransom slaves and sinners just like us. 

* I heard the voice of Jesus say - Horatius Bonar

Peace Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.