An Advent Meditation

God's coming cannot be forced or coerced. It comes only as a gift. And as a gift, we must wait for the giver. But this waiting itself, even if painful and characterized by a felt absence, is the reception of God's gift of God's-self.

See, we can only truly long for the presence of one who is already present to us. We can long for someone, in the abstract, who is absent and unknown, but we can only long for God, in the particular sense of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who fully revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth, this God we can only long for as his very presence creates in us the longing we feel for his presence.

So, may we, in our Advent longing for God's presence, sit in both anguished longing and the peace of God's presence, for they belong, indeed can only exist, together.

Starvation in the Land of Plenty

This morning, I read this during the morning prayer of the daily office: "Nourish your people, Lord, for we hunger for your word.

As I was praying it for us, I thought, "Can I pray this? Because I'm not sure we really hunger for God's word."

Then I realized that I was placing too much importance on our own awareness. Realize it or not, we are hungry. Starving even.

There comes a point when a person is starving (in the sense of actual, life-threatening starvation, not in the 'argghhh! I haven't eaten in like 6 hours' sense most of us are used to) when the hunger pains the person once felt fade away. This is because the body has begun to eat itself! At this point, even the though of food becomes unappetizing. But this does not mean the person is not malnourished. Is not slowly descending to death.

So, we certainly hope we become aware of our condition. But until then, we pray, "Please do not wait, O Lord! For we are starving for your word."

This leads to a more truthful understanding of the next line I prayed: "Rescue us from the death of sin and fill us with your mercy, that we may share your presence and the joys of all the saints."