Carried by Our Mother | Advent II
Read Psalm 131 A song of ascents, by David:
1 O LORD, my heart is not proud,
nor do I have a haughty look.
I do not have great aspirations,
or concern myself with things that are beyond me.
2 Indeed I am composed and quiet,
like a young child carried by its mother;
I am content like the young child I carry.
3 O Israel, hope in the LORD
now and forevermore!
As much as Advent reminds us of the darkness surrounding us, it is also a season that moves towards the light. We do not merely lament; we lament in genuine hope. That hope is not founded on an optimistic expectation of what God may one day do for us but concretely rooted in what God has already done. It rests on Jesus' first coming, His life death and resurrection, and the endowment of His Spirit that resides within us this very moment.
We cannot forget that this all has been done for us. We have not earned it. We have not discovered some secret knowledge through our superior intellect or reasoning ability. It has come by God's grace, and we cling to it by our faith, and it is life.
As we enter the middle of Advent, life has had time to infringe on our worshipful, expectant hearts. The clamor of parties, family, shopping, etc. has had time to crowd out our sense of purpose and wonder during this time of year. Our response is simple. Return to stillness, quietness, and simplicity. Return to faith.
Our reading today encourages our hearts to not fall into the trap of hoping for the things we so often believe will give us life. We yearn for bonuses, promotions, or even food and drink to satiate our longing hearts. We try to restore our lives with grand aspirations and desires, even well-intentioned ones. We seek self-improvement and self-promotion, thinking that the next thing will finally offer us the peace we've been for which we have been looking. Even in this season, where reminders that God has comes to us, we try to build our towers to heaven.
Consider your adolescent self. You undoubtedly believed obtaining something would make you something else. Whether it was getting that guy or girl to like you, that special thing you asked for for Christmas, the grade or acceptance letter you just knew would change your life. Many of those thoughts now seem silly. Yet this is not a practice reserved for adolescents, and while hindsight betrays the foolishness of that thinking, we still often place our hope for healing in the wrong things.
Maybe the things we spend our lives aggressively chasing are as equally foolish and empty as all those things we so badly required as teenagers. I would suggest much of what we are striving for today seems far more important than it actually is and will give us no more life than the PlayStation we received for Christmas 25 years ago did. A sudden surge of superficial delight followed by the return of our deep longing.
The psalmist reminds us to still our selves, quiet our hearts, simplify our lives, and become like children. Brennan Manning, the outcast priest and author the Raggamuffin Gospel, says that Jesus' directed us to be like children not because they are innocent but because they are helpless and needy. This is the picture the psalmist paints of deep spirituality. In the arms of God, we find safety, love, and strength beyond anything we could muster ourselves. It is in dependence and helplessness that we find the life, peace, power, and wholeness we spend so much of our lives searching for. It is in our stillness that we finally arrive at everything our striving was trying to get at.
So here we are, in the middle of Advent. Perhaps your spiritual life has struggled during this most wonderful time of the year, perhaps it hasn't. Either way, don't allow the pull from work, shopping, traffic, family, and the never-ending to-do list distract you from the One who feeds your soul. Pause; quiet yourself. Slow down and obey the command of today's Psalm, "Hope in the Lord." Do nothing less than this, and do not allow yourself to be deceived by our propensity to hope in so many other things.
Let’s live into this today:
Be intentional about creating space for intentional time with God this week. Find time to pray, sit in silence before God, and enjoy God's presence.
When something imposes itself into your life that brings stress and distraction, take a moment and remind yourself that this thing, as necessary and worthwhile as it might be, will never give you the life Jesus has.
Supplement your time with God with intentional reading or singing. We have a selection of recommended Advent resources for you here. Whatever you use, set aside some time to tether your mind to God's inbreaking into our world, and our lives. The light has shone into the darkness, and Advent celebrates all that this means for us.
