Advent Visions

December 2:  Time

Here we are again at another Advent.   Friday our family went out to find the perfect Christmas tree, cut it down, and bring it into the house.  We will put on several hundred lights and then decorate it with ornaments we have collected over the years.  Each brings a memory, a joy, and sometimes a sadness.  They remind us of time's passing.

Advent gives us a profound sense of time, not as a linear list of events, but as a circle.   Each year we come back again to this season of hopefulness, where songs and stories get us ready to welcome the birth of Christ.   But Christ was already born, once upon a time.   This season tells us to get ready for something that already happened!  And the reason is that in this circle called time, Jesus is always coming again, ready to be born anew.

The clock in our dining room is inscribed with the words "Hark, the cry!  Prepare to meet thy God today!"  When it was given to me as a gift nearly 50 years ago, I thought that was rather an ominous message to have hanging in our home.  I wasn't sure I was ready to meet my God yet.  I had things to accomplish, children to raise, books to write!   But as I think about it, our clock is proclaiming an Advent hope:  every day we should be prepared to meet  our God.   In the sweetness of the morning's first light.  In the beauty of tree-clad hills.  In the songs of the chickadees and sparrows outside the kitchen window.   In the eyes of my wife and the people dear to me.  In the silence of the night's stars.  In the ancient words of faith that are always pointing us to the possibility that God is up to something new right here, right now.   It is Advent, after all.

ADVENT

The clock ticks away
the moments of my years,
gone, unretrievable.
It is the sound of memory,
the whispers of joy and sorrow,
the voices that still echo
in the canyon of my heart.
I could be sad for all
that has slipped away,
but we are all caught
in a circle that rings us round,
an eternal coming.
So this is another season
to make holy.
This is a new day
to have the time
of my life.