The Fifteenth Day of Advent: A Time of Great Expectancy

Advent is about preparing, waiting, hoping, expecting, and praying that somehow God will come in some new way, not just to us personally, but to all people everywhere.  It is a time to look for a burning bush in the desert of life, for a pillar of cloud in the day, a pillar of fire in the darkness, a dream, or perhaps even an annunciation.  History is a record of God’s comings, both in our personal history and in the history of the world.  Because God came once upon a time must mean that God can and will come now.  But how, when, where?  Will I be able to discern that coming?  Will I have eyes to see, ears to hear, mind to receive, and sense to perceive that coming?   Yesterday morning God came to me in Thelma!  Looking back, I can see now that God has come to me through many of those who have walked with me and with whom I have walked.  But I must not limit God’s ways of coming, nor relegate those comings only to some yesterday.  How is God going to come this Advent?

"Here and now I will do a new thing; this moment
it will break from the bud.
Can you not perceive it?

Will Gabriel come with an annunciation?  Does God have some special message for us?  Will we hear it  as Mary did or dream a dream as Joseph did?  Why not?  If it happened then it can happen now.   Now don’t get all disturbed, I doubt that God is going to announce that you are pregnant with child.  But God might very well announce that you are pregnant with love and that you have some special loving to do.  God might say you are pregnant with a word of hope you need to deliver to someone who is in doubt, pain, or crippled by difficulty.  God may call you to “stand up and be counted” in some issue of the moment.  God comes sometimes with annunciations!

Do you expect anything new to happen within you this Advent?  Do you anticipate God coming to you with an annunciation?  We’ve made God’s annunciations in the Christmas story so spiritual, religious, other-worldly, and angelic, that we miss the gist of the story itself. If you don’t expect it to happen, don’t worry, it won’t happen.  Expect to hear, expect to dream some special dream—and maybe, just maybe—you will.  God comes this way, sometimes.