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Today’s text
Reflection
Advent begins at
the pit of your stomach where you long from something or someone to complete
you, to fill the emptiness in your inner being and obliterate the longing for
something more.
Advent is this
hunger for more.
It begins with
awareness that you and this broken, tear-stained world are incomplete and
unfinished. Awareness awakens desire and hope for the more to come fill the
empty places and heal the division and discord that scars creation.
But from where is
the fullness that fills our being to come, the healing that salves the world’s
wounds and brings peace?
I lift my eyes to
the hills, the psalmist writes, from where is my help to come? My help comes
from the Lord, the One who made heaven and earth … and me.
Just so, we pray,
come Lord Jesus. Come from eternity into time. Come to us. We were made in you
and for you. We are not complete until we enter utter unity with you. Only then
will our hearts rest in the peace of home, knowing we have arrived at the place
for which you intend us.
With all creation,
we yearn for the marriage of God and creation, the union of mortal flesh with
divine substance. The completion of creation and of our mortal lives is found
in the intimate bonding of our being with the God who is love and nothing but.
This blessed union
appeared in Jesus, which is why we call him the Christ. He is the marriage of
mortal flesh and the heart of God. He is the fullness for which we hunger.
Our longing is not
simply to look upon his beauty and be moved to wonder and praise. This alone is
great joy, but the more for which we hunger is to be as he is, a unity of
mortal and divine life. This marriage of created matter and the heart of God is
our completion and the world’s healing.
And so we pray with
fervor and hope, “Come, Lord Jesus. Come to us. Come to our world and keep on
coming until you fill us and all that is. Keep coming until all that is empty
and incomplete is healed and whole.”
This is our Advent
prayer, a prayer that is answered and will be answered until the end of time
when there is no more need to pray it.
Christ is being
born in a thousand ways and labors to be born also in you. The miracle of the
manger happens all the time, every day, which is why the Advent admonition is,
“Watch, stay awake.” For, our heart’s desire comes to us.
Pr. David L. Miller
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