Advent - Beginnings & Endings
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Yesterday, snow fell from the sky, blanketing our Minnesota earth in eight inches of beautiful white. I shoveled the driveway (several times) while the kids played with sleds, made lopsided snowangels, and tried to form snowballs out of fluff. Their laughter and play--along with the steadfast flakes that silently laced everything in wedding white--filled me with a rare peace.
It was much needed, because on this second day of Advent, I'm mourning an approaching death. The dear husband of a cherished, life long friend is dying. I keep thinking, He's too young. She's too young. Their kids are too little. I cannot fathom the road that lies ahead--how they can possibly find the gracious words and loving actions to say goodbye.
As I pray for them, and prepare my heart for these two--seemingly polar--opposites, I sense that I am at the precipice of an impossible divide. How do I ready myself for Christ's birth and at the same time, John's death? The two realities seems to whisper, We are closer than you think.
Birth and death are treacherous journeys, both. Neither are "easy." I am led to throw out commercial and sentimentalized images of Christ's birth--welcoming instead his heaven-to-earth crossing as dangerous, grievous, lonely, painful, but ever-hopeful. Looking at the divide in this way nudges me to ask:
Do I enter Advent and wait with the same depth of pondering, wondering, asking, searching, humility and prayer I have given to death, specifically John's?
In this season, and through many more deaths and births, I pray for the wisdom to journey well. I want to walk with companions of Love, Hope, Patience, Peace, Gentleness, Self-Control. May Christ be my All-Knowing guide.
It was much needed, because on this second day of Advent, I'm mourning an approaching death. The dear husband of a cherished, life long friend is dying. I keep thinking, He's too young. She's too young. Their kids are too little. I cannot fathom the road that lies ahead--how they can possibly find the gracious words and loving actions to say goodbye.
As I pray for them, and prepare my heart for these two--seemingly polar--opposites, I sense that I am at the precipice of an impossible divide. How do I ready myself for Christ's birth and at the same time, John's death? The two realities seems to whisper, We are closer than you think.
Birth and death are treacherous journeys, both. Neither are "easy." I am led to throw out commercial and sentimentalized images of Christ's birth--welcoming instead his heaven-to-earth crossing as dangerous, grievous, lonely, painful, but ever-hopeful. Looking at the divide in this way nudges me to ask:
Do I enter Advent and wait with the same depth of pondering, wondering, asking, searching, humility and prayer I have given to death, specifically John's?
In this season, and through many more deaths and births, I pray for the wisdom to journey well. I want to walk with companions of Love, Hope, Patience, Peace, Gentleness, Self-Control. May Christ be my All-Knowing guide.
