Liturgy 006: Second Monday of Advent
Take 5 Minutes to Slow Down and Be Present to God, Self, and Neighbor
🕊️ Invocation
Take 5 deliberate deep breaths and engage in this liturgy.
Come, Holy Spirit.
Another Monday.
Another day of exchanging time for currency.
Another day of participation in this economy.
Another day of list making and doing.
And yet.
Another day where every breath is a gift.
Another day where you are closer than I know.
Another day where your Kingdom is opening my eyes to find meaning in the mundane, and emptiness in the imposed imaginations of success handed to me by the false gods of my childhood and culture.
Come, Holy Spirit.
In these days of Advent, I pause to behold the mystery.
Like Anna and Simeon, who waited for a Messiah beyond their orthodox expectations, may I see you in the unanticipated spaces of my world and my inner life.
Come, Holy Spirit.
Amen.
🧘♀️ Quote
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand."
—Henri Nouwen
📖 Isaiah 7:14
The LORD himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, God with us.
🌓 Reflection - Fixing Drawing Near to Our Dysfunction
We often pray for God to fix things. We fantasize about one day in the future, when everything in life will be fixed. Your laundry machine, your relationship with your mom, etc.
Much of the dysfunction in our lives is born of our eager and ineffectual attempts at manipulating people and situations to our liking.
Greatly offending our logic as Americans, God’s response to humanity’s deepest need is not a fix.
Think about it - nothing gets fixed on the first Christmas Day. God arrives in the person of Jesus and… Rome is still oppressive. The Temple remains corrupt. Political division is as strong as ever. Families remain in conflict. Much of God’s people remain impoverished village peasants paying exorbitant taxes to a foreign Gentile king.
Will Ferrell’s favorite version of Jesus does nothing to fix the plight of human need.
But if you’ve ever held an infant child, you know the paradox.
A powerless child, held close in your arms breaks into a smile and seizes the way you see the world. What once was important is of no value. And what once went unseen is now of utmost importance.
God doesn’t fix much on Christmas. God draws near. God joins all the peculiarities of life in Palestine in the first century. God joins the mourning of Israel for days of old. God joins life in the village under the hand of Rome. God joins the strangeness of faithfulness to the Law of Moses while under Pharisaic leadership. The mystery and the good news is not that God fixes, but that God draws near!
What if the invitation of God for you this Advent season is to release your need to manipulate and fix - aka your need to be god?
What if faithful discipleship during this season looks like offering your nearness to someone else?
If you are a Type A, Enneagram 1 Creature - it probably is more transformative for you to allow yourself to receive that nearness from others. Yeah? No? Ok.
For me, the primary practice of Advent (waiting) is contemplation. Quietly observing the ways God is near just beneath the surface of all things in my world. Maybe not an immediate fix. But a transformative nearness.
To be clear - our God is making all things new!
But God begins by drawing near. May we do the same.