It
happened the other day, when I walked into Lowe's store for a hardware
item. "For goodness sake, the
Thanksgiving Day has not even been celebrated," I said to myself. Noticing to my chagrin, at age
seventy two, time passes more quickly for me, my cognitive decay kicked in and
it seemed that all this preparation for a forth coming Christmas celebration had
been inadvertently left behind from the previous year’s Christmas sales shelves.
Then for a moment I cowered at the thought of digging through boxes in the
storage area, we have rented for twenty years, containing dozens of Christmas
decorating items we have accumulated over the past forty nine years. At
this point, it seemed better to be a month early in setting it up than ten
months late in packing it away. I decided to make a note on that afternoon to
begin planning the day after Thanksgiving as a full throttle day of commitment
to assisting Bettyann in the joy of decorating, inside and out.
Strangely enough,
my decision then coincided with a friend’s mentioning a good Christmas
quote. Advent was suddenly all around me. In a Christmas sermon given December
2, 1928, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer said, “The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are
troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, who look
forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble
fear until the Holy One himself comes
down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus
comes. Christmas comes. Christians rejoice!” To be early with my commitment to
drag out the boxes of decorations and help in the process of decorating
suddenly seemed a wise, but convicting thought. What about the sake of
remembering? If Advent reminds me that I am waiting in now, beginning the last week in November, what
reminds me that I am waiting in October or February?
The story of the
Nativity, though beautiful and familiar, and admittedly far-reaching, is as
easily put out of my mind as Christmas decoration are put in boxes. On
certain sides of the calendar, a Nativity scene looks amiss. Sitting on my lawn
in the fall or the spring, it seems somehow away from home, far from lights and
greenery, longing for Christmas fanfare. But looking at it with thoughts of
Advent near, I am struck by the irony that longing is often my sentiment amidst the
glittering lights, greens, and fanfare of Christmas.
Bonhoeffer continues, “When once again
Christmas comes and we hear the familiar carols and sing the Christmas hymns,
something happens to us… The hardest heart is softened. We recall our own
childhood. We feel again how we then felt, especially if we were separated from
a mother. A kind of homesickness comes over us for past times, distant places,
and yes, a blessed longing for a world without violence or hardness of heart.
But there is something more—a longing for the safe lodging of the everlasting
Father.”
Unlike any other
month, these days begin weighing on my heart. The Gift and the difficulty of waiting. The listening to Christmas songs and hymns, I remember that I am
troubled in soul and looking for something greater; I remember that I am poor
and imperfect and waiting for the God who comes down and I hear again the
gentle knock at the door. I embody a strange hope, though. I see a home with tears and
sorrow, but I also see in this home the signs of a day when tears will be wiped
dry. Advent is about waiting for the One who embraced sorrow and body to show
me the fullness of home. Really it is not December that reminds me I am longing
for God to come nearer, but the Nativity of God, the Incarnation of Christ. For
each day is touched by the promise that in this very place Jesus has already
done so, and that he will again come breaking through, into my world, into my
longing, into my sin and death.
In his sermon on
Advent, Dietrich Bonhoeffer offered a prayer worth praying in this morning and really all year
round: “Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and
overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my
unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my
brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and
death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as
I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.” Every
day, despite its location on the calendar, a still, small voice answers my cry
persuasively here and now, “Behold. I stand at the door and knock.” Amen
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