The attentive waiting
of Advent is the practice of entering into the Story, and as we contemplate
those who entered into Jesus’ first coming, so we discover our role in entering
into Jesus’ coming return. This process
takes time – potentially, years – and the Season of Advent is an annual gift to
us, to this end.
Do you identify with
Mary, who took on an apostolic role: birthing the new thing God was bringing-about
in her context; and guarding the integrity of the new, in transformed
continuity with the old, by treasuring in her heart the things God was
unfolding?
Do you identify with
Mary’s relative, Elizabeth, and Jesus’ as-yet unborn cousin John, who took on a
prophetic role: testifying to what God was about to do, pointing to the new
thing as-yet just beyond the horizon; helping ground the apostolic urgency in
the bigger picture?
Do you identify with
the shepherds, who took on an evangelistic role: spreading the good news of the
birth of the Saviour through the streets like a virus, infecting the
neighbourhood with glad tidings of peace and joy?
Do you identify with
Joseph, who took on a pastoral role: enfolding Mary and Jesus in his protective
care; nurturing the Word-become-Flesh through patient apprenticeship?
Do you identify with
the Magi, who took on a teaching role: bearing gifts to help inform the One who
had emptied himself of all knowledge of what it means to be human: gold, which
reveals that to be human is to have physical needs, of food and shelter; incense,
which reveals that to be human is to have spiritual needs, to forgive and know
forgiveness; myrrh, which reveals that to be human is to have emotional needs,
experiencing love and loss...needs each met by the Father’s provision?
What
is your role, as you attentively wait?
To bring to birth? To foretell the
imminent arriving? To proclaim the now-arrived? To nurture the new? To foster growing wisdom?
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