Third Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Prepare
In spite of all I’m doing, my being is getting more quiet. Advent’s Holy Spirit is seeping in. The call of Gabriel to Mary and Elizabeth and their magnificent songs with each other, alongside the silence eventually appreciated by Zechariah balance each other inside me, and I … am.
God shows us how, right? In his continuing activity of creation God is like one of his own sweet creatures, like our own cells even, or a hurricane with its still center and swirling arms, God’s hands making all things new.
Cry out with joy and gladness, for among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.
My own swirling arms bear little fruit except they find their places from the quiet center, from the warm virgin point within me of God’s inhabiting, from what goes beyond mattering and is simply There.
Isn’t this just fine? Like a single cello playing Silent Night in the snow, moon rising above trees. This is precisely not the lonely howl of a wolf. It’s the miracle of music proclaiming God’s words, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” Alleluia! Sing the syllables and stretch them out like the softest sweetest pasta you can imagine, warming in your mouth.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
What could Paul have said to his Philippians? Many things, but he settled on the ever-clear message that God is all we have, and God is more than enough. In a beautiful Advent message Ruth Haley Barton acknowledges our weary souls.
How can I say the most true thing to God? The image of the angel coming to Elijah in his beleaguered state with a jar of water and a cake baked on a hot stone speaks to the reality that in God there is always hope and sustenance, coming to us from an often unexpected source. In God there is always enough, even when our own resources have run out.
Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!
Sing joyfully, O Israel!
Be glad and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!
The LORD has removed the judgment against you
he has turned away your enemies;
the King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst.
God’s silence spoke volumes to the Hebrews in the four hundred years before Jesus was born. Zephaniah’s confident and joyous proclamation, two hundred years after Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal and six hundred years before Gabriel called Mary the mother of God, must have sounded to the Hebrews in synagogue like a far off echo of something they could not themselves hear.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
Isaiah’s words will soon be in the mouth of Jesus. If the culture around us beckons us toward despair, those words of Jesus beckon us back to our home.
(Zephaniah 3, Isaiah 12, Philippians 4, Isaiah 61, Luke 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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