Gifts That I Desire Today
The night before Christmas I used be full of anticipation. I’d listen to my mother wrapping presents on the ironing board, the thump of boxes, the screech of paper being ripped, and folded around her gifts in the room next to mine. She worked late into the night. I fell asleep hoping I’d see my desires fulfilled.
They were.
My parents put a lot of thought into our gifts. I still own the glass panther and unicorn they commissioned for my brother and me. One Christmas, my father replaced my mother’s lost diamond with a diamond I put on after they died, finding deep comfort, that I wear to this day. I was embarrassed by my parents’ lavish generosity. But giving gifts was how they showed love. Quietly they paid the bills.
Even though I outgrew that Christmas eve anticipation, I learned that our desires are granted. Even our longings for what C.S. Lewis called joy, our longing to light up like autumn leaves glowing in late afternoon light, show that even that thirst will be slaked.
These days I wake up looking for the gifts I might find — the bars of light slapped against barn boards because the sun is setting that far south and shining through the door, the sandhill crane, flying low and elegant, over the road, the cat’s weight on my lap, my husband’s warmth in the morning. These days the saying, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” runs through my mind.
I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective.
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I Sure Do Like Advent
Advent is my favorite time of year because it’s about waiting. As a young woman one of my favorite verses in the Bible was, “Wait, I say, wait on the Lord.” It seemed as though I was waiting–waiting to grow up, waiting for prayers to be answered, waiting for the mosquitoes to stop biting, just plain waiting. My church didn’t celebrate the church year, so I didn’t know there was a whole season dedicated to waiting–waiting for Christ to come as a baby. And that deep longing of a whole people for the Messiah who would heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, raise the dead was answered when He arrived as a baby.
Here’s a lovely post about what it means to wait for a child to be born, and how God is our midwife that I found soul filling in a newsletter from Kris Camealy. (Click on her name.)
Advent reminds us to wait for Christ to come again, to look for his return. In the Daily Office and lectionary we are reminded. My childhood church didn’t talk much about Jesus’ second coming because they said the issue was so divisive, because people see how Jesus might come so differently. But it’s pretty clear when he said that he’d return the same way, as he left, in the clouds, for all to see. I’ve listened and learned from people’s different takes on how the second coming might play out. Uncle John used to chuckle and say he was a Pan Millennialist because it would all pan out in the end.
The Second Coming
I used to sit and watch sun rays drop out of the clouds and long for his return. There’s something genius in telling a people to look for Him to physically return instead of looking to die as a way to meet Jesus in person. And now we’re waiting for his return to set things right. These days I think about Jesus words that his return would be like the days of Noah when people were going about their regular lives–eating, drinking, getting married, when Noah entered the ark and the rains came. People associate his second coming with violence–a final, horrible war where blood will rise to horse’s bridles and people calling for the rocks to hide them from the raw majesty of God himself.
Would I be one hiding under the rocks? Ever since I was a girl, I have been startled by the thought, what if God actually did show up and talk to me? The thought terrified me. Even John, the reputed writer of Revelation, and beloved of Jesus, fell on his face, when he saw a glorified Jesus in his vision. Isaiah cried out, “I am a man of unclean lips. I come from a people of unclean lips.”
But there is a doxology, I wrote out nightly, when my Five Minute Journal asked for affirmations, that pastors sometimes recite at the end of church. “Now unto him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time, now and forever” Jude 24 – 25.
But I think about Jesus coming back, my hope not for bloody valleys, but I long for the One who wipes away tears from our eyes, and who steps on the mountain, making a river with trees for healing of the nations. I think about how Jesus can come to us now, with His presence. I hope that he will draw near the broken hearted and crushed in spirit, bringing peace and even joy when a person’s life has grown dark and terrifying.
A Tough Season
This is a season where the church year begins in darkness, and pinpricks of light in trees inside and out, that we use to remind ourselves that light is coming. The sun gallops across the sky way too fast. I have been awake at late dawn and photographed the sun pushing out of clouds, crowning. And then wondered how it was already high above the barn mid morning.
For many Christmases I have grieved the loss of my family, but not since we moved to the country. I have friends who have lost their spouses. I can’t imagine the sorrow during this “most wonderful time of year.” So many memories. So many bittersweet tears. So much exhaustion. And daily decisions to meet the day. I don’t have much to offer except prayers for comfort and a reminder from the Psalms. “My health may fail and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; He is mine forever.” Ps. 73:26
The Power of Hospitality
We don’t know if our neighbors will invite us to their celebration, but we were invited at Thanksgiving. Ever since we moved here, that horrible Christmas loneliness has eased. We know our neighbors well enough, so going to their celebration is familiar, kind. We catch up on stories and eat special recipes. The biggest gift is to be included at the table. It’s not just the meal that fills us, but it’s being welcomed, being loved as in love your neighbor, and belonging. We have found this community at our church, Christ the Rock. Since Bruce and I don’t have our biological families, it’s this kind of belonging, that helps us be quiet, content and happy on the holidays when we aren’t invited. It helps us know to invite people here who might like the company.
Maybe it’s this sweet hospitality that is a what Paul means by saying, “The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put not the armor of light” (Rom. 12:12)
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