Advent: Anticipating A New Day

 

We have entered the season of Advent—the four Sundays leading up to Christmas.   (This is my favorite liturgical season.) The season begins in darkness, which we interrupt with a single point of light—a tiny candle flickering on our Advent wreath.  Over the next few weeks, the symbolic light on our altar builds as we prepare to welcome the Light of the World, about which the Gospel of John says: “The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it”—John 1:5. 

To truly appreciate Christmas, however, we need a season to prepare our hearts and minds—and the starting point of that season is darkness.  Advent gives us space to acknowledge the hardscrabble reality of our daily lives, to admit that this world can be a dark place at times.  We need the freedom to acknowledge that reality as opposed to glossing it over if we are to truly appreciate the gift of Immanuel—God’s Light coming into our darkness to dwell with us.  Church attendance tends to swell on Christmas Eve.  By then the Light has come, the baby is born and laid in a manger.  For that one night: “All is calm, all is bright.”  But journeying through Advent helps us better appreciate how badly we need this Light, and the kind of world into which that baby was born.  

At the time Jesus was born in Bethlehem (or Nazareth depending on which version of the story you read), the Roman Empire brutally oppressed the Jewish people.  Both Matthew and Luke portray the earthly parents of Jesus as refugees.  Luke’s birth narrative tells us that Mary and Joseph are forced to move late in Mary’s pregnancy in response a decree of a distant Emperor that: “all the world should be counted.”  Matthew’s version of the story puts the focus on the local puppet ruler of Judea, King Herod, whose paranoid fears run wild when he hears about a “newborn king” from some wandering Magi who “followed a star” so they could come and honor him.  When the wisemen defy Herod’s order to return to him and report their findings he flies into a rage and vows to eliminate any possible threat to his rule. He orders the slaughter of all boys under two years old.  (Yes, that’s infanticide right there in the Christmas Story!)  Matthew (writing to a primarily Jewish audience) envisions the Holy Family undergoing a kind of reverse-Exodus as they flee from the Promised Land to Egypt to escape King Herod’s treachery.   Laster, after the “evil king” dies, they return to Palestine.

In summary, the world into which Jesus is born is not a particularly safe world for a baby to be born.  It’s a very dark and violent place.  Does it sound like any other worlds you know?

  

Sam Gamgee at Osgiliath.  Credit: Tolkiengateway

Sam Gamgee watched as the world he knew came undone.   As he gazed out of the towers of Osgiliath, under siege by forces of the Dark Lord Sauron, the darkness, oppression, violence, and chaos was palpable.  Sam was the faithful companion of Frodo Baggins in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings.  He followed Frodo on his journey from their idyllic home in the Shire to Mount Doom—the place where the One Ring, which gave Sauron control, could be destroyed.  

Toward the end of the second movie, “The Two Towers,” Frodo and Sam are exhausted from their journey to date.  Frodo is losing hope that he will ever complete his task.  The burden of bearing the One Ring has nearly consumed him: "I can't do this, Sam," he says hopelessly to his companion. At that point, Sam stands up and looks out at the ruined city and the Nazgûl flying towards Mordor in the distance. Sam agrees: Rightfully, they shouldn’t even be here… but they are here and they must deal what is as opposed to what they wish was.  And then he offers up these inspiring words to his fatigued friend:

“It's like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something… That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for!”

Advent wreath with four candles
lit on the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Whether it’s the real world in which we live, or the worlds that we dream up in our imagination, we see repeated over and over that human nature is to love the darkness more than light (John 3:19), to revel in the violence, even to be seduced to normalize injustice and celebrate the chaos.  Like Sam’s exhortation to Frodo, God invites us to imagine a new day—and a new way of living. Advent is a season where we intentionally focus on this alternative story that God wishes to write upon our hearts.  But when the season begins, the sun has not yet risen on that new day.  In fact, it’s a pitch-black, moonless night outside and the new day seems like little more than a passing dream. Awoken from our slumber, we light a single flickering candle and place it on our altar to help us cling to our dream-vision and the hope it might one day become reality.

The theme of week one of Advent is hope, which hinges on us being able to envision the dawning of this new day—Jeremiah 29:11.  Paraphrasing the song lyric, “we believe in the sun, even when it’s not shining,” even when it’s the middle of the night and the sun won’t rise for many hours. Keep in mind the context of the scripture above.  The Prophet says the “future with hope” will come only after Israel’s best and brightest spend decades in exile in Babylonia.  We’re not speaking of a passive hope where the outcome is in doubt.  Rather, it’s active hope, where, as Gandhi would say it, we are to “be the change we want to see in the world.”   In other words, we don’t sit back and passively wait for God to bring about the future we dream of, we actively participate in doing our part to make it a reality.

Once we get grounded in God’s desired future—as opposed to our own—then the light of the new day begins to dawn, and we can begin to grapple with rethinking peace, joy, and love in the light of the new day we anticipate.  These are the themes of the next three weeks of Advent.  We realize that peace is not merely the absence of war and violence, but the reality that God present with us no matter where we go or what we do.  We understand that joy is not equated with happiness and or dependent on agreeable circumstances in our lives.  Like Paul we can learn the secret of being content (joyful) in all circumstances—Philippians 4:11–12.  Then, perhaps hardest of all to embrace is the greatest of all the gifts—love.  We learn ever so slowly to practice the agape love of God.  We live in a world that tends to love us if we are deemed worthy.  We’ve all been well schooled in conditional love, but, as Jedi Master Yoda might council us, “we must unlearn what we have learned.”  

At Good Shepherd UMC, we’re using a song during the Advent season called Make Room. A line from the chorus asks us: Is there room in your heart for God to write [God’s] Story?   It goes on to “warn” us that: 

You can come as you are
But it may set you apart
When you make room in your heart
And trade your dreams for [God’s] glory.

As Christ followers, we follow in the footsteps of the spiritual heroes described in Hebrews 11 who traded their dreams for God’s glory and let God write God’s story on their hearts.  Their great acts were inspired by confident hope in a good future—even when they had no visible evidence of that future—Hebrews 11:1. Just like the heroes in Sam’s “great stories,” the folk in Biblical stories had many chances to turn back, only they didn’t.  Why?  Because despite the darkness, injustice, and chaos they saw running rampant in their world, they were convinced that “there’s good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for!” 

Those heroes of our faith took their stand against the forces of darkness of their day as we do in ours. The author of Hebrews reminds us that many of them died never seeing the fullness of the future they worked toward—Hebrews 11:13. The same fate may await us; nevertheless, we are called to persevere as they did.  Like them, we acknowledge and confront the darkness, injustice, and chaos of our time but we also believe that the baby born in that manger is none other than the Messiah—the one who comes to save us.  As followers of Christ, we base our faith on the belief that the birth of Jesus was the vanguard of a new day for humanity.  We live out our lives in the time between the sunset of the old day and the sunrise of the new—but. like Sam, we live with confidence that “in the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”  Eventually, the sunrise will come, and “when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer.”  That’s the basis of our hope for the future—despite the present darkness, injustice, and chaos in our world—and as Paul reminds us in Romans 5:5, that in the long-run, “hope does not disappoint.”  

As we journey toward the Light during this Advent season, may we “make room” for God to write God’s story in our heart, and allow God to weave the threads of our individual tales into the tapestry of One Story can rewrite all the other stories—God’s Story.  May our intentional focus on hope, peace, joy, and love, prepare our hearts to receive the gift of Immanuel—God with us—anew this year.  May the Familiar Stories of the season connect to your story in a new and transformative ways this Christmas.  

 

Becca Turns 15: A Trip Down Memory Lane

 Yesterday (May 2) was my daughter Rebecca May’s 15^th birthday.  When did all that growing up happen?!  It seems like only yesterday that I used to hold her in my arms and rock her to sleep and take her in my arms and do “The Rebecca Dance” (which essentially consisted of me dancing around the room singing, “Rebecca,” repeatedly to the tune of “The Mexican Hat Dance”).  Now, seemingly in the time it took me to blink once or twice, she’s a beautiful, strong, confident young woman working her way through high school and finding her way in the world.  Becca does life with spirit—whether she’s strumming her viola, or playing softball, or binge-watching Law and Order, SVU, or listening the latest Harry Styles song, or participating in scouts, or reading Scripture, or writing poems in her journal.  

We’ve often said of Becca that she carries the spirit of two: that of herself and of her twin sister Hope Marie—who lived only two days before she transitioned from life support to life eternal. 

 

Although we intentionally try to focus on Rebecca on May 2, her mother and I always take time to remember that this is Hope Marie’s birthday too. (And Becca has become more aware of this fact as she’s gotten older.)  While May 4 may be “Star Wars Day,” for the world, it’s also “Hope Day” for our family—a much more somber occasion to be sure.  We typically visit the cemetery where Hope is buried on May 4 (which in an ironic twist of life, is also my brother’s birthday), and we pause to remember that which any parent who has lost a child truly never forgets. Rather, we’ve learned over these intervening 15 years to “put the grief in its place” and open it up from time to time when we want to intentionally remember Hope—such as on “Hope Day.”  

 

To some extent it’s true that time does heal wounds—or at least puts a scab or scar over them.  Fifteen years brings a sense of growing separation.  Becca grows into a young woman before our eyes while her sister Hope remains an infant in our memory.   But sometimes that’s precisely what brings fresh tears to her parent’s eyes late at night, as we look at old photos and Facebook posts about Rebecca experiencing a lifetime of milestones and other everyday family moments that Hope never got to experience.  

 

I think what I have grieved most over the years is that we never got to know who Hope would’ve been as a person and how she would’ve interacted with her family and with others.  Rebecca and Hope obviously would’ve looked the same—but they no doubt would’ve been two distinct individuals.  I never got to experience being a father to Hope as I have for Becca.  In fact, I’ve always had a sense that the whole world lost something because Hope didn’t live.  

 

*****     *****      ******     *****    *****

This blog has been in existence since 2008.  As some of you may remember, what is now called Threads of Glory started around the time the twins were born.   This was my second time going through the birth experience.  The first time, with my son Brady (now 17), was such a blur of activity that it was hard to remember all that happened.  I wanted to be more intentional about recording what took place this time.  I had no idea then how important this endeavor would become.  The words I wrote became a chronicle of what we lived through beginning May 2, 2008.

 

Obviously, the blog expanded to be about much more than Becca and Hope.  If you’ve followed along, you know I’ve posted periodically and waxed theologic about many topics over the past 15 years.  However, I notice I do tend to come back to the “source subject” quite often. 

 

For those who might be interested, I’ve compiled below is a list of posts that focus on Rebecca and/or Hope.   

 

·      Before the girls were born, as we were preparing to welcome twins, their mom had a short-lived blog called Grace Lives Here.  Honestly, I had almost forgotten Laurie did this until I was looking back to prepare this list for Becca. So much living has gone on in 15 years, that details begin to slip my mind—which is why I like having this written record! 

·      A few weeks before they were born, I wrote a post to start Threads of Glory (my blog's name, in case you've forgotten) called Holding on to Hope.  I had no idea then how much I would have to live those words in the weeks, months, and even years ahead.

·      Then there were the series of posts I made during that crazy first month of Becca’s life.  (Note that they appear in reverse order; go to the bottom if you want to start at the beginning.). These started as updates when we were in the hospital delivering the twins and continued for a while after we got home with Becca. (WARNING: This material is pretty raw—particularly the early posts—as it was reported as evemts were unfolding on that fateful day and shortly thereafter.)

·    And last but not least—were all the posts I’ve made on or around their birthday. These include:

·      Their first. A Bittersweet Milestone as Becca Turns One and our first Hope Day.

·      Their third. Can it be? Becca is Three!;

·      Their fourth. Happy Fourth Birthday Becca May!;

·      Their fifth.  Surprises and More Surprises;

·      Their sixth. Becca is Six Today;

·      Their seventh. Rebecca May is Seven Years Old Today;

·      Their ninth. Celebrating and Remembering;

·      Their tenth.  Letters I wrote to Rebecca and Hope;.and

·      Their twelfth. A Poem for Hope During a Pandemic.

·      Their fifteenth.  The listicle-post you are reading today!

 

*****      *****      ******     *****     *****

Preparing this list was a gift for my daughter—but the trip down memory lane ended up being a gift for me too.   My eyes grew strangely moist as I viewed all the photos in these posts.  Some of the text in these posts became the basis for more personal birthday letters I wrote to her—or vice versa.  

 

Some of you might not need to read all these because you lived through these events with us, but for some it may help you know my story a bit better.  This event had a profound influence on my spiritual formation. Even now—15 years later—it’s hard for me, a writer, to fully put its impact in words.  Likely, it would take the perspective of others who’ve known me for many years (e.g., my wife) to tell you how living through all this has changed me. I hope it made me better and not bitter—although I’m sure there have been moments of both along the way. 

 

What I am convinced of is that God walked with us as we walked through this entire experience, that God has used the tragedy of us losing our daughter Hope Marie for good, and that God continues to guide our family today.  Furthermore, I think God may have special plans for Rebecca.  She has a real passion for the Scriptures and learning about her faith.  I’m curious to see where all that might be leading… 

 

Over the years we’ve often repeated the words we wrote on her birth announcement: “in Rebecca’s face we will always see HOPE.”  While this is certainly true (since they are in fact identical twins), in the birthday note I wrote for her this year, I reminded that her mom and I also see the unique creation that is Rebecca May Ward—and that we couldn’t be prouder to have the privilege of being her parents!

Humility: "An Accurate Assessment"

The shaded box below is taken from Richard Foster’s book, Learning Humility, which some of us are studying at my church.  We will meet the next five Wednesday evenings at 6 PM in the parlor—and via Zoom.  If this writing resonates with you, it’s still not too late to join our class. 

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves—Philippians 2:3 [NRSV]. 

 

I really hate to take issue with one of the great saints of the church, Bernard of Clairvaux.  It is his well-known definition of humility that rankles me a bit.  He wrote, “Humility is a virtue by which a man has a low opinion of himself because he knows himself well.” The phrase, “a low opinion of himself,” is what is hard for me to swallow.  No doubt I am reacting to the long history of worm theology that has done so much damage in our day. And, of course, the modern psychological concern for a healthy self-esteem is an important factor also.

 

Likely I am not so much taking issue with the good doctor as I am trying to translate him into our contemporary context. If I can reinterpret just a bit, I think Bernard is trying to get at the importance of being able to enter into an accurate assessment of who we really are. This is the point of his underscoring the need to know ourselves well. I appreciate this phrase.  And knowing ourselves well does indeed bring us down close to the earth: humus. [1]

 

I think this short blurb says much about what it means to be humble—and what it doesn’t. 

Humility is not about shaming ourselves as being unworthy but rather seeing ourselves as we truly are.  

This definition brings to my mind lyrics from a song by Brian McLaren:

We will not pretend to be better than we are.

We will not hide our failures or cover up our scars.

If we’re honest, we do a lot of pretending to be “better (or, maybe in the context of humility, worse) than we are” and “covering up our scars.” We wear “masks” to hide the true us from others—and even from God.  We fear that: “If they knew the real me, they would reject me.” 

 

To give an example, I personally struggle with criticism of things I do—e.g., of my writing.  I tend to receive any criticism as: “Alan, you are not good enough.”  It’s the shaming voice of the Enemy, I know, but it’s hard for me not to internalize it and take it personally.

 

For someone who thinks of themselves as both a writer and a prophet—two “callings” where critique and rejection are commonplace—it makes it hard to fully embrace who I believe God calls me to be.  Instead, I usually “play it safe,” keeping most of my thoughts to myself, quietly editing and writing for NASA for over 20 years, and publishing occasionally on my blog or in a church newsletter or other venue.  In those settings, the chances of critique and rejection are considerably reduced—though not nonexistent.  Any time we choose to “go public” with even the smallest part of ourselves, we’re bound to receive feedback—not all of which will be positive. 

 

While I’ve occasionally ventured out from these controlled settings, for the most part, I tend to speak my voice in settings that are familiar, comfortable—and where I’m reasonably certain that what I say will be accepted.  

 

But that’s not me being humble, that’s me living in fear.

 

That’s me not trusting in who God is—and who God has made me to be.  Scripture reminds me that God’s perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18) and I want to believe; but if I’m honest, I also struggle with unbelief (Mark 9:24)—which is a thoroughly human response. But as consequence of my choice to “play it safe” I settle for less than all I could be in Christ, and I’m not quite sure how to break the stalemate and break through to fully embrace my true self.

 

What about you? What thoughts do Foster’s words stir within you?  

What does it look like for you to be humble—to come down to earth, to honestly assess who you are before God?

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[1] From Learning Humility: A Year of Searching for a Vanishing Virtue (InterVaristy Press, 2022), Chapter 4, p. 42.