Staring into Advent
Advent calendars start with December 1; Advent starts when it starts regardless of the calendar, or maybe in spite of it. Already Christian observance of the season is at odds with the culture that we are soaking in, so for December one and two this year, as Advent starts tomorrow, I’m recycling a couple of readings that were for dates this month which had two readings.
December 1, 2023. T -2 days–an Advent address Advance Advent– Waiting to be waiting. The reading is Romans 15:8 to 13.
Before I actually begin, I made this list and calendar of advanced readings to support our Advent bags staircase that I first attempted in the year 2013, but often haphazardly executed.
Our daughter was asking if we had an advent booklet for a big felt advent calendar that we used to use with them when they were kids. This would’ve been perfect except that I have no idea where, or if, we have it I figured I would just have to sketch out my own calendar with a few favorite verses. How hard could that be right?
I searched online for quote Advent Bible readings,” “daily adventure readings,” and similar topics. A couple of websites were helpful but what I was left with was a free offer a 90 day free offer to trial during Advent with CS Lewis, or Liam Neeson.
I appreciate the work of both of these people but it wasn’t quite what I was wanting.
I noted how some of the websites followed a pattern of selecting verses from old Testament prophecy, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles; different sections of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I made a few notes and moved on.
I thought about it. There are some events that I needed in my advent observance:
- the Annunciation the angel talking to Mary
- Joseph’s dream – don’t be afraid to marry Mary
- Zechariah’s silence
- The Creation
- The flood
- Stuff from the whole arc of Christendom from Genesis to Revelation; from the Garden of Eden to the Holy city coming down from the clouds
I opened a December 2023 calender in Microsoft word. I renamed it Advent 2023 and began filling in passage citations. Then I realised that I knew what the 24th would be; The Main Event! (spoiler alert: Jesus is Born) Before that, they would have to do the Christmas road trip, etc. Then I knew what would come before that so I just work backwards: 24 nativity; 23, travel to Bethlehem. It would’ve taken, how long? to get to Bethlehem?; 22, Joseph’s dream; 21, Mary and Elizabeth; 20 the Annunciation, etc., and so it went. I could do this stuff in my sleep right?; 19th Zechariah shuts up; 18th… well, people waiting in darkness? The 400-year silence of the prophets? Hoping? The remnant?
For some reason I was reminded about King Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation– His dream of a stump bound with iron and bronze in the ground in a field–but that is a digression.
For the rest of the days, I just kind of backfilled until I got to December 3, the start of Advent.
Then I printed off the selected verses, Cut the strips for each day’s reading, put them in the bags, placed them in the bannister spaces, adding five nails in the molding above the kitchen door because we didn’t have enough banister spaces visible from the front hall for the whole 24 days.
Hope – you are a mist
I woke up this morning thinking about the futility of life.
In a group of men meeting at the church, last night, out of about ten, approximately all of us were dealing with serious, major or life-changing events in our close families:
death of parent / parent-in law, terminal illness, serious cancer, mental health challenges, Alzheimer’s, alienation from family member
I cycled through Mountain View Cemetery (in the City of Vancouver,) this week and remembered how quickly even stone monuments crumble. (These pictures were taken a few years ago) A turn through the cemetery is a good memento mori. When I am gone, how much will the earth remember me?
This week, I feel that James has much to tell me about life:
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
Where is the hope in “you are a mist”? I was thinking – what remains once the mist has vanished? We get foggy days, here on the coast. The mist obscures everything so that you could easily lose your way, and hardly find your hand in front of your face. When the mist burns off with the warmth of the sun, you can see your path, the mountains the sky, the sun.
What we see of life seems so very real, and it is, but let us never forget that this life is not the final reality. The mist clears someday. Then we will see God face to face.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Grateful
Writing during Lent, I will write forty words a day, but these are not Lent words, but may be writing “redemptively”
Today I am grateful for:
- nearly twenty crows in a leafless maple
- blue sky, sunshine and cirrus clouds (mares’ tails)
- an old brown dog
- friends in Malawi
- children learning to read and write
- spring flowers and bees
and to God, the maker – his handiwork is anywhere I look, if I take the time to see
joynwonder 