Advent Thoughts

With Advent comes the story of John the Baptist. The story of John the Baptist is a story of the word of God coming to us from the fringe of our lives. The center of religion in Israel was Jerusalem, the temple, and the religious leaders. This would have been where people would have expected to hear the word of God proclaimed. But it was in their encounter with the wilderness that they heard God’s word proclaimed. “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” (John 1:23) Wilderness’s have a tendency to strip us of our pretentions and recall for us what is important in life.

Recall Israel’s first experience in the wilderness as it is captured in both Exodus and Deuteronomy. The Hebrews had complained for years about their painful conditions in Egypt. They cried out for freedom. Then suddenly they were free of the constraints of Egypt only to discover that they didn’t know how to survive in freedom. They were urban dwellers. What did they know about living in the wilderness? Now they grumbled for the good old days of slavery in Egypt where at least they had enough to eat. But God stripped them of the security of slavery so that they might discover again that “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8:3)
Too often we expect God to come to us at the points of our strength and places where we are in control and comfortable. Yet God’s voice is often that which speaks in the desert of our lives and of our society. The danger of our current problems, I think, is that we can easily slip into hoping to return to the conditions prior to our current series of crisis. Like the Hebrews, the memory of our previous slavery does not seem so bad. If we could just return to a time when greed and use of violence to dominate our neighbor prevailed, maybe everything would be comfortable.

Consider Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24. “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Especially in our current circumstances, we want to respond, “Life is not always good.” But Paul continues: “Give thanks in all circumstances,” and we want to challenge that we are not thankful for everything. But that is why Paul admonishes us to “pray constantly.”

It is not that life is always rosy or that “positive thinking” conquers all. Rather it is that God is sovereign and can redeem any circumstance. We are to rejoice in the sovereignty of God in the darkest of circumstances and give thanks for God’s redeeming power exactly where we least see it. The only way we can prevent ourselves from being defeated by the tragic in life is to stay in contact with the transcendent. It is precisely because life is not always positive that we need to rejoice and give thanks to God in every circumstance.

Have we become too self-complacent in our lives? Without realizing it, have we become slaves to greed and dependent on the use of arms to protect us? Do we need to be stripped of any illusion of invincibility to learn again that one does not live by bread alone nor is one protected by either affluency or military might?

Call to mind a dark moment in your life that you can now give thanks for because out of that circumstance God worked a good result. Let that memory give you strength for the future. Advent is a time to listen to the wilderness and expect the birth of God’s presence.