Hi Everyone,
Continuing to improve. Went out for a little while today and have been working most of the day on the laptop and writing some letters and cards. Catching up with people and ploughing through some of the work that has been building up. What a wonderful sense of God's grace I have had today. Was praying for a smile while Hugh Murray walked down my path with a bundle of ironing - God's messenger to me at exactly the right moment! Feeling quite sore and drained tonight though - but refreshed and blessed at the same time! Couldn't sleep last night - was in quite a lot of discomfort, and so I got up to watch the dawn and was reminded of something from a while ago.
A couple of years ago, around this time of year, I had a real epiphany and it came back to me this morning as I was preparing for the day ahead - and praying for each of you. I looked out what I wrote then and here it is - I discovered it was just as relevant now as it was then.
From 2007 - in preparation for Advent...
This morning, as I went about the task of preparing for the day ahead, I silently sat out side the chapel schoolroom and watched the sunrise. The air was cold and crisp and I could see my breath form in little clouds as I gasped in and out the oxygen of life. All around me was still except for the leaves of the trees that were falling like nature's snowflakes onto the ground all around me. As the sun rose, it's light relentlessly pushed away the darkness around me. Nothing would stop this darkness being dispelled. Not just this morning – but every morning. This ritual, which I often try to catch a glimpse of, infuses me with hope and joy. It is God’s way of reminding me in nature, of the spiritual reality of advent and the true meaning of Christmas. I love the following poem by St. Thomas Aquinas:
Light of lights! All gloom dispelling,
Thou didst come to make Thy dwelling
Here within our world of sight.
Lord, in pity and in power,
Thou didst in our darkest hour
Rend the clouds and show thy light.
Praise to Thee in earth and heaven
Now and evermore be given,
Christ, who art our sun and shield.
Lord, for us Thy life Thou gavest,
Those who trust in Thee Thou savest,
All Thy mercy stands revealed.
We mark advent every year – but I am not sure we are always that good at celebrating it! It’s a time when the church, through our long history, prays prayers of longing and waiting. We sing songs of hope and promise.
It’s a time for longing and yearning by remembering.
I want, this advent, to walk this season with you. Through it I hope we can each take up all of our needs and yearnings and longings and call out to God ‘Come’! Yet we cry, ‘Come’ knowing that as we approach Christmas, Christ has already come! He has already pitched His tent amongst us. He has already shared His life with us. He has entered into our little joys and sorrows, our yearnings, our pain and our pleasures. God has already broken into out world – but not just into the big, bold world of someone else. Advent reminds us that He has broken into our world. He walks our contradictions with us. He knows that we can start a day felling on top of the world, and finish it feeling like the world is on top of us! He knows the lethargy and apathy we feel one moment and the energy and passion we feel the next. There is no way that God could come nearer to us than He already has because He has already become the Son of man.
Yet still we pray ‘Come’ in advent. And we do not just pray it mindlessly, without feeling or emotion. We pray it with a depth of yearning and longing which the word itself cannot capture. I see the world around me, and the people I love here at The Chapel and Warham and in other places caught in such struggle (or enjoying great joy!) and I don’t just say ‘come’ I cry it! That prayer of longing erupts from my breast like a long held gasp of air that must be expelled otherwise I will not make it. And here is the secret of advent, perhaps, that we often miss. Because in this season we not only acknowledge and wonder the first coming of God amongst us, we yearn for the second. This is the key that we often forget. Advent invites us to stand on the strength of God’s first coming in anticipation of His return. The solid, historical reality of the birth of the Christ child guarantees that the Parousia or the coming of the great King Jesus will be as strong and solid and real.
Advent means that my hope is grounded, fixed, dependable. The first gasp of breath by the baby in the manger in Bethlehem almost 2,000 years ago is directly connected to the shout of God on the day of Christ’s return – the voice that will call us to meet Him in the air is the same voice that cried for His mother’s milk in the cave-stable outside Bethlehem.
Christ is out eternal advent. He is the One who came, and will come, but Advent also reminds us that He comes to us now – by His Spirit. God is not the One who is always to come, but never comes. He is not the One who is beyond our reach or our grasping. He is not some distant voice that plays with our emotions and teases our hearts. He is not just the figure in the background of our past or the small dot in the distance of our horizon. Advent reminds us that the God who came is both the God who will come again, and the God who is with us. He is our yesterday God and our tomorrow God, but He is also our Today.
Sometimes I think that I have not drawn close to God. My feet feel as if they are bleeding with the hardness of the road and my lungs ache with the effort of breathing in my search for Him. In those moments I have forgotten the meaning of both the Incarnation and Advent. This seasons reminds me of the power and promise of the God who is real, the God who has come, the God who will come and the God who is with me now. I can find God now, because God was found in Jesus in a specific time and place.
With all of this promise – what is the problem for me? Why do I need to be reminded of God’s once for-all-coming in Christ and His constant coming in the Spirit and His promised return? Well, because His coming can actually feel more like a going! The all powerful became a slave. The hidden God became one of us. He quietly and inconspicuously took up His place amongst us. He walked with us without fuss. Advent reminds me that the first coming, as a baby, and the second, as a king, will be different. God came and walked in order to go so that one day He might come again! He promised He would come – and oh how He came! He took a human life as His own. He became like us in everything – but perfectly. Born of a woman, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. And in dying He took up again the very thing that we fear most – death itself. In dying, He began to deal with what we thought would be ended in His coming. His life, death, resurrection and ascension are all part of His coming! His return is part of His arrival! His going is part of His coming because our going (death) is dealt with forever in His coming (life and death) and coming again!
So as I watched the sun rise, I was reminded of hope and life! I was reminded of Advent – that it is a message of coming, coming again and coming now! Slowly ( as it does most days) the lights dawns again, not just in the sky, but in my heart. God is still in the process of coming. His coming as a baby was but the beginning. The beginning of the redemption and transformation of my frailty, weakness and doubt but more than that – the transformation of every square inch of this planet. And so the strange and most wonderful thing that we remember in Advent is this – Christ will come again! Yet His coming again is connected with that first cry in the manger. And the whisper of the voice of His Spirit to us here and now, to me as I watched the dawn proves something so wonderful that it is beyond words. His first coming and His second coming are held together by this, the greatest of all wonders and the most precious of all gifts, He came to me again as I sat by the schoolroom by His Spirit and He whispered to me:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the end. Behold! I make all things new!
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
On those living in the land of the shadow of death
A light has dawned.
Isaiah 9:2 (NIV)
What came into being through Him was Life,
And His Life was Light to live and flourish by.
The Life-Light brilliantly shines and blazes out of the darkness with purpose and power;
The darkness couldn’t put it out, diminish it, change it, comprehend it, overcome it or defeat it (never could, never can, and never will)
John 1:4 (My own translation)
Who says the Christmas season has to be drowned in commercialism and we need to forget the meaning of Advent? Christ has come - and He will come again - therefore we have hope!
Malcolm, Thank you so much for this timely reminder about Advent. As I print off your blogs I am collecting a file of inspiring letters to us all. I knew God would never allow you to be totally "silent" - He has opened up a channel of "speech" that can be read again and again. Thank you for your openness and for using the gift of writing that God has given to bless us all. Take care of yourself. Trish
Posted by: Trish Neeves | November 10, 2009 at 09:50 AM
Dear Malcolm,
I'm just amazed how God works in you and through you. There is such an outpouring through you - if you can't speak - you can write more than you speak. Praise God for his word in you. Thank you for caring about us (me) and praying for us (me). I'm humbled that at times of your own suffering - your first thoughts are for your Christian Family. I pray for Debbie and your Children, Your Elders and Your Christian Missions. Love and blessings - David Gregory
Posted by: David Gregory | November 10, 2009 at 02:25 PM
Thanks for the comments- humbling and encouraging.
Posted by: Malcolm Duncan | November 10, 2009 at 04:08 PM
Tack, jag har söker efter information om detta ämne i evigheter och din är det bästa jag har hittat hittills.
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