...the time that I've taken

A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone;

Short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.

---Isaac Watts, 1719

Time is such a strange concept. Each day has twenty-four hours in it; some seem to fly by and we leave things undone, while others crawl, second by second. And I’ve known people that I would wager had more hours in the day than I do --- they fit so much more in! And does time take forever when we are waiting on something? Daylight saving time? Don’t get me started! It’s been over a week, and I’m still mad about the hour that disappeared into thin air from my overnight one Saturday night!

This is not a new puzzle; the Israelites were always wondering when God would act, and tiring of waiting for things to happen. In this 300-year-old text, Isaac Watts reminds us that our time and God’s time are different. We may find it easier to wait when we remember that God’s reality runs on a different clock than ours.

...on singing all the verses

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;

Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;

his craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,

on earth is not his equal.

---Martin Luther, c. 1529

In some churches, when time in the service runs short, hymns may be abbreviated by leaving out verses (personally, I think each verse has its own message for me, and I love singing them all!). With most hymns you lose some of the wisdom using this approach, but the general message remains understandable. Today’s hymn is a stark exception. Sing only the first verse of this hymn, and the world is left in the hands of evil, with no valiant hero to fend off our “ancient foe”. What a state we’re left in at the end of the first verse of this 500-year-old hymn!

But in hymns as in life, an old saying comes to mind. It goes like this: “Everything works out in the end. If things haven’t worked out, it’s not the end!” With our human shortsightedness, we grow impatient for things to work out, for problems to be solved, for worries to be calmed, for questions to be answered, for right to prevail. Because our sight is limited to vision, we tremble at the unseen unresolved. Because our sense of time is limited to what we can measure, we cower at the prospect of a boundless future. Remembering that God’s time is not often our time, let us actively await the final stanza…

“God’s kingdom is forever.”

...I need you, Jesus (but just a little)

Come, ye weary, heavy-laden, lost and ruined by the fall;

If you tarry till you’re better, you will never come at all.

Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream;

All the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of him.

---Joseph Hart, 1759

I have never had a maid or cleaning service (visit my house and you’ll know it!), but I have heard several folks speak of “cleaning up for the maid to come”. It always makes me smile a little, but I sort of know the impulse. Maybe it is the same urge that overcomes folks with disorganized piles of random receipts just before they meet with their accountants. There is something in us that will admit we are needy, but not too needy. We need Jesus’ salvation and life-changing power, but we don’t want to need it too much. Sure, we’re sinners, but not sinners.

This hymn, one of my favorites from that era (1800’s American), reminds me all the time that we all need Jesus, and that if I wait around to acknowledge my need till I’m more worthy of Christ’s attention, time will pass, and I may never approach the intimacy with God that Jesus offers me. I need not dream of fitness; Jesus is ready to accept me as I am…poor…needy…ready.

...renewed for glory

You come, O Lord, with gladness, in mercy and goodwill,
 to bring an end to sadness and bid our fears be still.
In patient expectation we live for that great day
when your renewed creation your glory shall display.
---Paul Gerhardt, 1653

We are used, I think, to the idea of waiting on God to reveal Godself in the world. The thought of that kind of waiting is like slipping on a pair of old, comfortable blue jeans---worn smooth, weathered and stressed in the very spots that your body bends and stretches, faded and sun-bleached. Reassuring, comforting---no surprises with this pair of jeans. Waiting on God is what we are used to.

What if we found out, all this time, we should have been waiting for something else? Not as in something different, but something in addition to? What if, maybe, God has had something else in mind for the revealing?

What if God's glory is to be revealed, not just to us...but in us? 

What if, while we have been waiting on God, God has been...waiting...on us?

What if we are being renewed for the express purpose of revealing the glory of God in our world?

...winter's clear anatomy

I love to see, when leaves depart,
The clear anatomy arrive.
Winter the paragon of art,
That kills all forms of life and feeling
Save what is pure and will survive.
---Roy Campbell

If you look out any window where you chance to be right now, odds are you'll see them. Tree skeletons. Tall ones, narrow as rails. Squat ones, bones a tangled mess. Huge ancient ones, central trunks it would take two of us, three, to embrace, with tired arms nearly sweeping the ground, full of stick bundles long abandoned for cozier, deeper climes. Looking, for all the world, like death. No life here, not in these bones.

But we know. We, who've been around the sun a few times ourselves. We know there is life in those dead-looking tree skeletons. We know they are resting, for a season. Waiting. We know that to count them out now, because they look done, finished, over, would be a grand mistake. We know the purest sort of life is hidden in that bareness, waiting for its time. Distilling, concentrating, becoming more itself, more true, the life waits.

Don't discount the bare trees of winter.

...a not yet world

You come, O Lord, with gladness, in mercy and goodwill,
to bring an end to sadness and bid our fears be still.
In patient expectation we live for that great day
when your renewed creation your glory shall display.
--- Paul Gerhardt, 1653

We live in a 'not yet' world. It is easy to look around and see that things are not as they should be. There is pain, disease, systemic failure; there is evil, cruelty, apathy, human weakness. There are a few with way too much, and way too many with way too little.

Our world does not reflect its Creator. Not yet.

But part of the Advent waiting we do, in addition to looking forward to observing the birth of the Babe in the manger, is looking forward in eager anticipation to the time when God's dream for this world and the reality of this world become one. This, too, is Advent.

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. And all flesh shall see it together.

Make this hope your guiding premise

Match your present to the promise, Christ will come again.
Make this hope your guiding premise, Christ will come again.
Pattern all your calculating and the world you are creating
to the advent you are waiting: Christ will come again.
---Thomas Troeger

Does the whole 'Christ coming again' idea ever confuse you? It does me (good thing the world doesn't depend on whether I have it all figured out or not!). When I read the ends of some of the Gospel accounts, it seems Christ comes again, several times over. I know that throws open a debate over what age we are currently living in, and that makes lots of folks a little nervous. Me, too; but mainly nervous over what kind of 'Kingdom Come' created here on Earth.
I like what Thomas Troeger has to say to us here, though. I hear him saying, 'Leigh Anne, live your life in line with the promises you say you believe from God. Create the world you say you are waiting on. This is the arrival that is advent.'
What do you think?

...so here we stand, whoever we are,
bathed in the light of a star...