Advent I: Waiting

Like eating my vegetables, being told there’s value in waiting was advice that never had time to go in one ear and out another. If I could see something, imagine something, I didn’t see why I should have to wait. I’m grateful for the ability to see and imagine, but I’m not proud of my inability, or my unwillingness, to wait. It has often done me more harm than good and prevented me from the wonder that’s found in waiting.

Nowhere was that impatience more evident than during my childhood days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The music could begin soon enough, tree put up fast enough. Each day after school I would go into the living room and organized (and count) the presents as they slowly found their way beneath the tree. By the 24th, my brother and sisters tell me, I actually began shaking in anticipation of what was to come.

Fortunately, with age, I’ve found a deep joy in the days leading up to Christmas - Advent, as the church calls it. It is the season of waiting, and now it is that waiting I treasure most about Christmas. With each carol played, each ornament placed, and each candle lit, my soul takes a deep breath and dreams dreams like at no other time of year. What if . . it sighs with childish wonder. 

Fortunately, I have all month to contemplate my answer. What a gift it is, a gift found only in waiting.

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (feat. Flo Paris & Sera Oakes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GMYo2pqAv0

(If you listen all the way through, you’ll see why I picked this version.)

Thanksgiving 2021

His mother’s glare was enough to stir the dead, or at least get him to stand and open his hymnal.

Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices;

He was always aware of God, thankful even. He didn’t know why he needed to go to church, let alone on a Thursday, to be reminded of all his blessings. He’d learned about God in church, but he felt God could be worshipped anywhere.

who from our mothers' arms has blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

I guess he’d learned about God from his parents, too, not so much from the things they said, but from just being their child. He loved how it felt to sit in his mother’s lap, to talk alone with his father. He knew they loved him, even when he didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t something he understood, but he figured God was somehow like them.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us, to keep us in his grace, and guide us when perplexed, and free us from all ills of this world in the next.

As the youngest, he spent a lot of time alone, but he didn’t mind. He had a great big back yard (one of the things he was thankful for) and a dog who always found it easy to wag his tail. When they played, he was never lonely. He liked the way the sunlight touched the branches, how the clouds made funny shapes, and how the wind caused the leaves to dance. God was a part of all that. God was all that, he thought. It was as if God was playing beside him.

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given, the Son and Spirit blest, who reign in highest heaven the one eternal God, whom heaven and earth adore; 

His mother reached down and lightly touched his head during the third verse. His father looked over and smiled. It was like they were one and the same, but different, too. He stopped thinking about the fact that it was Thursday, that he had to get up and go to church, or wear fancy clothes. He was grateful to be standing there. Loved. By them and by God. He didn’t know what to do with all that love. He fidgeted, looked around, then decided to join the others and sing.

for thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore. 

Happy Thanksgiving Brushstroke Readers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov8b9rF6VSg

Lighting Candles

“Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

Chinese Proverb

The rector walked over to check on the church when it was still dark. A hurricane had taken out the power throughout the city, but the walk was short and he knew it by heart. Opening the front doors, it was darker inside. Stretching out his hands for something to give him bearings, he hit his leg against the back pew. 

“This is ridiculous,” he said to himself. “I should have stayed home like everyone else. It’s just too dark.”

He made his way down the center aisle, using the pews like a cane. When he reached the front, he knew there was a candle off to his right - the baptismal candle - placed up front, beneath the pulpit. His searching hands almost knocked it over. 

When he lit the candle, there was light, and it was good, he thought. Very Good. Now he could see its light reflecting on the edges of the wooden pews nearby, the pulpit, and the piano by the lectern. He could also see other candles which he went and lit, one by one. First, the two on the altar, then the ones in the windowsills. Once he was done, he could see the church again. 

Relieved and comforted, he took a seat in one of the pews and enjoyed his parish as if for the first time. There’s a sermon in what just happened, he thought to himself, but sat and enjoyed the candlelight, for now.