Why Wait?

This Advent, I have had the time to listen to others.  Here's one piece of wisdom I read today:

Advent is a season devoted to waiting.  It is a time when we celebrate waiting, honor those who waited for the coming of the Messiah, and seek to learn something about how we might join them in waiting for the Spirit of Christ to be born again in our midst.  But waiting is difficult for most of us.  In this era of instant gratification, as the world is put in fast forward, even our limited capacity to wait has diminished still further.  It seems as if, among all the things we no longer have time for, we no longer have time to wait. 

As challenging as it can be to wait, however, certainly it is preferable to the alternative.  Those who have ceased to wait generally are those who live without hope.  When all that you see around you is all there is to be, then there is no need to wait.  But there is also no hope of progress, movement, revelation or transformation.  To wait is to be open to the future.  To wait is to be open to God. 

 If you'd like to read the rest of this reflection, go to this link.

Pick Me Up

This morning, as I fixed my morning coffee, I noticed a small pile of hand-written notes on scraps of notebook paper I'd left on the Breakfast Bar yesterday.  They were letters to Santa.  For the past several years, I've had the honor of playing Santa at Lakeland School in Elkhorn for their annual Waffles with Santa fund-raiser.  Lakeland is Walworth County's beautiful school for special needs kids and young adults.  Each December for one Saturday morning I don a Santa suit and sit on a Santa throne where children can talk with me and have their picture taken with Santa.

I get to visit with about 50-75 students, some of them  three or four times during the course of the morning.  Some bring wish lists -- "a live bunny," "a life supply of candy," "some mistletoe" (requested by a 16-year-old boy), "a WIDE TV," "$50,000," and "my first kiss" (from her boyfriend).  Others, when prompted by their parents, just tell me what's on their mind.

Some of the kids are frightened by the Santa throne, and can only get within two feet of me before they start to scream.

When the action slows down, I climb down from the throne and wander among the families eating waffles.  The kids are far less afraid of Santa when he's not on his throne.  As I visited with one group, a little girl of about 4 or 5 years came over to me and requested, "Pick me up."  I looked to her mother for permission, and when she nodded I picked up the little girl, expecting that she had thought of something else she wanted for Christmas, or decided it wouldn't hurt to repeat her list to a potentially-forgetful Santa.  Instead, when I picked her up, she quietly put her arms around my neck and laid her head down on my shoulder without saying a further word.  I continued to talk to the family -- it didn't phase the little girl.  After about three minutes had passed, she lifted her head and looked me in the eye. "I can get down now" she said.  I set her down and she ran along to play with her friends

How often our meeting with God is like having waffles with Santa -- we come to share our list and get our picture taken. Then, once we've smiled and said, "Cheese," we climb down and go our way.  But this little girl -- she came to Santa and said, "Pick me up."  And that was all she wanted.  When she was ready, she said, "I can get down now."

I will never forget that little girl -- it was a special moment.  I suspect that God cherishes those moments when we come to him, not with our list, but simply to request, "Pick me up."  God holds us in his presence until we are renewed, and can say, "I can get down now" to return to our daily lives.

I hope that sometime, during this Advent season, you will find time to approach God and say, "Pick me up."

Pray Without Thinking

In an earlier life, when I taught Broadcast Journalism to university students, I would explain to them how even the most seasoned newscaster could read aloud news copy, having the words go from the eye to the mouth without ever passing through the brain. To wit: five minutes after a newscast ends you can ask the newscaster for a detail of the story he or she just read, and they won't have any idea what that detail was. We do the same thing in worship, allowing the words of our public prayers to pass from our eyes (reading them) to our lips (speaking them) without those words ever passing through our brains. This past Sunday, attending the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Janesville, WI, the following prayer was part of our worship:

Gracious God, we gather this morning as your people on the first Sunday of Advent. I know this season is supposed to be different. Too often, O God, I spend most of December feeling divided. The hustle and bustle of the world set to the tune of Silent Night feels a bit disjointed. The sounds of cash registers ringing and to-do lists growing -- and yet I am told that in a smelly stable of all places You broke into our world; how can this be? [I’m] disjointed by the wisdom of the world that tells me “The one with the most toys wins” and your wisdom that comes in the form of a vulnerable baby. Maybe these tensions are not meant to be resolved. Maybe in these tensions my faith meets the world. Christ was born to make us whole, to see Your presence in everything. And everything means everything. Help me this Advent to prepare for Jesus’ birth in all I do.

The words, Maybe these tensions are not meant to be resolved. Maybe in these tensions my faith meets the world. did not go directly from my eye to my mouth -- they registered in in my brain. When my faith meets the world, whether during Advent or during the rest of the year, tension is inevitable. Yet, all too many of us would rather avoid the tension than permit it. This Advent, I shall be a little more conscious as to the places where my faith and my world are in tension.