flickering hope

Happy first day of advent - the day of Hope. If you're looking for a way to make advent a little more intentional this year, I put together a devotional meant for a short morning and evening reading and prayer. It's accessible here if you would like to use it.





The last few months have been difficult for my faith. I've alluded to it on this blog, but it has been hard to put into words and has not been an experience I've wanted to share. I haven't known where it's going or how long it will take for all these things to sort themselves out, and I still don't know. 


But today is the first day of advent. Advent is one of the most beautiful seasons of the church calendar, and I didn't want to shut myself off from it even though I felt numb toward God. So today I opened up the advent devotional I wrote last year and read the scriptures listed for this morning. It had been so long since I read scripture outside of class. I read Genesis 1 and 3, the stories of creation and of the fall, and I finally began to feel how the prodding and probing and pulling apart of scripture in my classes was starting to make sense. I got to listen to the message of the story rather than be distracted by whether or not it happened just so. The message was faint, essentially still inaudible, but I felt it, felt something. And for so long I've just wanted to feel something. 

Then I read Zechariah's prayer in the Gospel of Luke, and for what seemed like the first time I felt a kinship with him and with the scores of others through the pages who have waited for a mysterious, unknown God. Someone two thousand years ago longed for God so deeply that they wrote these words: 

"...because of the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
79 to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace."

And then I went to church for the first time in months, back to St. George's Anglican where they were wearing the blue robes I knew advent would bring. Someone who didn't recognized me greeted me and wrote my name on a name tag and asked if I was visiting; I stumbled over my words and finally said, "Um, kind of." I was afraid that I would feel like a traitor walking through those doors, like I'd ditched the church when it got hard and I was coming back just for Christmas. But I didn't feel that way after all; I felt like I was coming home. Hesitant and uncertain, but home. Where I wanted to be. 

The opening words of the liturgy silenced my very soul: 

"Across the universe, 
creation waits  for the prophets to speak
their words of expectation
and their vision of renewal.
May we gather round them today once more 
and let their longing grip us
and lead us into birth and blessing.

So come now my friends
this is the meeting place
of promise and prophecy.
Let us listen through the ancient words
that we might be ready to hear
a baby's cry."

The service eventually came to the part that had brought me here entirely: the lighting of the first candle of advent, the candle of hope. The gentle voice of the priest and her caring gaze spoke volumes as she reminded us of the significance of this candle. "Hope," she quoted, "is simply trusting that God still knows the recipe for manna." Hope. In the midst of a grand church building, a tiny flickering flame meant more than everything else combined. Just a little tiny light still breaks the hold of darkness. 

The service ended with these words:

"Come, O come, Emmanuel. 
Everything is about to change. 
So make everything new. Make us new, 
Reveal your glory in our lives
and in the rhythms of our lives,
so that nothing will get in the way of your coming. 
Come, O come, Emmanuel. 
Go with us now into the world.
We can begin again!
Amen."

And we were dismissed with the blessing, 

"Go in hope." 

I did.