I find rest in the restorative flow of God’s created rhythms; the cyclical repetition of days, months, and seasons; and the rhythms of birth, growth, and aging that mark our lives.  I also cherish recurring anniversaries and designated days of remembrance and thanksgiving that remind me of God’s steadfast love over the  generations.

Yahweh guided Moses in punctuating the year with festivals and pilgrimages to help the Jewish people remember in embodied ways who’s they were and who had created, rescued, and delivered them.  Jesus’s childhood and adult life were marked by these rhythms.  He entered a story, centuries in the making, to provide the ultimate rescue for all peoples through God’s ordained people from their bondage to sin and death.  Jesus’s incarnation set in motion the unfolding of His embodied life culminating in His Passion, Crucifixion, and triumphal Resurrection.  His resurrection would in turn set the stage for the ultimate unification of Heaven and Earth under His glorious reign.  And so we remember and we recall Jesus’s first coming even as we anticipate with hope his embodied return.

My most magical childhood memory of Advent is of a candle lit midnight Christmas Eve service when I was 11.  I was invited to play in a brass ensemble with my father.  The glow of the sanctuary as we played Silent Night awakened my sense of the numinous.  It would not be long thereafter that I would personally encounter the One whose presence I intuitively sensed that night.

The Advent season would continue to be special for me, yet limited to lighting a candle each Sunday of December.  Then in 2010 I attended my first Advent retreat at Corhaven.  Bill Haley introduced us to the larger arc of the liturgical calendar.  I marveled at the gift of reliving the good news of Jesus’s life anew each year beginning with Advent.  We recall, remember, and relive the anticipation of Jesus’s arrival, which for Elizabeth began with her conception a year before Jesus’s birth.  We are invited to relive the drama of two women, one older and one younger, than their ideal ages for giving birth along with a wondrous diverse cast of characters.

But there was more.  My imagination is still captivated by the multi-dimensionality of time as it relates to Advent.  Bill masterfully invited us to recognize that Advent is about the present and the future as well as the past.  Jesus comes to us!  For me His coming has a historical dimension.  I vividly remember the evening in September in 1971 when someone explained to me for the first time that Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection was for me so that I could be released from my fear of God’s wrath and rest secure in His love forever.  I was overwhelmed with a depth of gratitude that has defined the course of my life ever since.

And Jesus keeps coming  to us.  I cried gentle tears of gratitude when Bill offered our first Advent retreat in Baltimore on the 3rd anniversary of my wife’s passing.  Her brother Merrill and his wife came all the way from South Georgia to mark that day with my daughter Megan and me.  And so He keeps coming to each of us in our places of waiting and longing.

And He is COMING to make all things right, and so we cry Maranatha, come Lord Jesus, come.

I am slowly learning to create more margin in this season to remember how He came, to be present to where I and my family and our world desperately need Him to come to us now, and to strengthen my hope by remembering the triumphant return to come when all things will be made right and we will be able to rest and live secure in loving reign of Jesus realized in its fullness.

I was tickled to discover that the Celtic Church dedicates 40 days to the advent season matching that of Lent.  I am grateful for contemporary writers like Tish Harrison Warren Advent: The Season of Hope who embrace the Celtic spirit of fasting, humility, and repentant preparation for Jesus’s coming.  Ignatius of Loyola in his exercises dedicates an extended section of connecting with the lived experience of Jesus in His conception, formation, birth, dedication, and childhood through imaginative prayer.  Pray As You Go offers guided audio lectio divina meditations in their Pilgrims of Hope 2024.  Bette Dickinson’s Making Room in Advent collection of paintings and meditations has become a favorite in Baltimore thanks to Wanda Bickers☺  And I would be amiss to not mention The Romances of St. John of the Cross  that helps us imagine the loving dialogue between the Father and Jesus that led to the incarnation.

Thanks be to God for the wisdom of our mothers and fathers in the faith who have put in place rhythms of remembrance to help us attune to Jesus in our present longing and need.  May you find the rhythms that help your soul engage the living presence of Jesus with you and those you love this Advent season.  Thanks be to God that we are not alone.