Awaiting Rescue!

An Australian mining town will always remember the year 2006 of the dramatic rescue. News of the mining tragedy shook the small town after an earthquake killed one miner and trapped two others 3000 feet under the ground. For days that would turn into weeks, teams of miners bore through tons of rock; rescuers could only work one at a time on their backs in a cramped rescue tunnel, using hand-held tools to avoid caving. Meanwhile, the two trapped miners huddled into a four foot-tall cage and could only wait for rescuers to break through rock they knew was five times harder than concrete. Five days after the accident, the trapped miners began to hear the sounds of their rescuers. Six days later, the miners were located, contact was made, and hands passed food and hope through a crack in the walls that held them. Fourteen days after the accident, over 300 hours of waiting for rescue, the two miners were freed. "This is the great escape," said Bill Shorten, national secretary of the Australian Workers Union. "This is the biggest escape from the biggest prison."

As I was reading the story it filled my emotions with anxiety as I imagine it (its dramatic ending all the more vivid with mining stories in mind that did not end the same. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to be freed after such an ordeal).

Over seventy years ago from a pulpit in London, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the image of a man trapped after a mining disaster in his book Christmas Sermons: Deep in the earth, dark as night, the man is cut off and alone. The supply of oxygen is limited. Food, water, and options are scarce; silence and fear are not. He knows his situation, and he can do nothing but wait. "He knows that up there, the people are moving about, the women and children are crying—but the way to them is blocked. There is no hope." But what if just then, in the distance, the sounds of tapping are heard—the sound of knocking, the sound of friends, the sound of deliverance?

This, said Bonhoeffer in December of 1933, is the hope of Advent: the coming of a deliverer, the drawing near of God to humankind, the arrival of Christ our rescuer. Those who are caught in darkness will see a great light. Those struggling in silence will stand up and hear the knocking. A voice is crying out of the wilderness: Who will have ears to hear it?

Advent teaches us how to wait. Bonhoeffer asks, "Can and should there be anything else more important for us than the hammers and blows of Jesus Christ coming into our lives?" In our waiting, should we not cry out as the first believers did, Come, Lord Jesus! This is the ancient cry of palpable hope—Maranatha!—Lord, come quickly! Advent teaches me to wait and watch, and to live expectantly, though I sit in the dark, though I find myselfs impatient. "When these things begin to take place," instructs Christ, "stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke 21:28).

In the days of Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, the people of Israel were living in a period of silence. It had been over 400 years since God had spoken of a coming Redeemer and his forerunner through the prophet Malachi. Malachi called the people again to anticipate and to be prepared for the day that was coming. Of course, in the quiet nights of 400 years even faithful men stumble and doubt.

But when I purposefully and intentionally listen, settling myself in soul silence that

in the distance there is knocking. There is the sound of hope drawing near, the sounds of God's reign in unexpected places. There are the sounds of saints who have gone before me and who proclaim their rescuer even in death. There is the sound of a promise: "Because I live, you shall live also" (John 14:19).

The world is still dark and lonely. I can not refute the fact. But every day a quiet voice calls out, "I stand at the door and knock." Christ has come. Christ is here. Christ will come again. My moment of rescue draws near.

After Black Friday............

Black Friday is the name our present has given the day after Thanksgiving. I discovered it is called "black" because retailers know it as the time of year when it is hoped that sales move from the margins of red or gray into the black and farther into profit margins. Evoking both buyer and seller competition, steep sales and loud advertisements make for a frenzied scene and the need for stamina. Now, I for one prefer to watch from home but still sense the fervor that begins on Black Friday and continues in a hectic race until Christmas. I noticed, that while I was not officially participating this past in the buying frenzy, I found myself analyzing how many customers were in the six check-out lines, how many items each were purchasing, as well as, which clerk seemed to be at the top of their game. In the moment, I said to myself, “Bill, just relax, be still and don’t get excited. It’s not going to be worth it.”


Yes, the commencement of the Christmas shopping season overshadows the commencement of a far quieter season. This coming Sunday; the season of Advent signals the coming of Christmas, in the Church world, though not in the way that Black Friday signals the coming of the same. "Advent is about the spirituality of emptiness," writes Joan Chittister, "of enough-ness, of stripped-down fullness of soul." It is a far cry from the hustle of the holidays that is a race for storing things up. Speed-hoarding through the days of Christmas preparation, Christmas itself even becomes anticlimactic. "Long before December 25th everyone is worn out," notes C.S. Lewis, in God In The Dock, "—physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them. They are in no trim for merry-making... They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house." But, you know, the opposite is true. I believe Advent is a season meant to slow me down, to open windows of awareness, to trigger consciousness. It is about finding the kind of quiet and the sort of emptiness that can hold the fullness of God as an infant in my awareness.

Of course, for even the quietest of hearts, this God who becomes human, the incarnate Christ, is still a mystery. But mystery, like beauty and truth, is well worth stillness, wonder, and contemplation. And this mystery—the gift of a God who steps into the world he created—is rich enough to make the most distracted souls bow. "Let anyone with ears listen!" said Jesus repeatedly throughout his life on earth. "But to what will I compare this generation?" he added. "It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn'" (Matthew 11:15-17). I can open my mind to hear the great and unsearchable things I do not know, things like the Incarnation that I may never fully understand but am always invited to know further. Or I can look for all of Christmas to correspond with societal whims and unconscious distractions.

Christ will come regardless. The hope of Advent is that it is always possible to make room for him. I am reminded of a marvelous book, entitled: An interrupted Life: The Diaries 1941-1943, the writings by Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who composed a remarkable series of journals in the darkest years of Nazi occupation before being sent to Auschwitz, where she died in 1943. In one of her entries, Etty wrote, "sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes." I am aware, when I think about it; Advent can be this simple; the invitation of Christ is this simple. Let anyone with ears listen! Contemplating Christmas need not mean aggressive lists and budgets, endless labor, and fretful commotion.

I ask myself isn't Advent, after all, about the riches of being empty-handed; empty-handed, so that I can fully hold the mystery before me and nothing less; empty-handed, like the God who came down from heaven without riches or power, but meek and small—and full of everything I need.