One Will Come
Friends, I was blessed with some very fine mentors and reverse mentor relationships. One, John Winn, published a book of prayers that describes Advent in one sentence that returns unbidden as a holy whisper. I offer it to you: “Advent is a time of anticipation that One will come who knows our needs and limitations and will help us overcome them.”
Advent is a time, a window of the actual and potential on its way to us in every moment. If we take Jesus seriously, this moment, every moment, depends on all of us.
Advent is a time of anticipation. Despite the events in Waukesha, and the bone-numbing grief on top of the sorrows that Kenosha is emblematic of, ours is a time of anticipation, watchfulness, openness. We put a telescope up to the soul for God’s newness.
One will come who knows our needs and limitations! We don’t have to hide our limitations for this One who knows us and yet is still en route to heal and make whole at the point of our individual and collective need.
Next is the bad news before it is good news: this one will help us overcome our places of need and the devastating impact of our limitations. God will not overcome them without us or take away the consequences we need to seek change. God will help, not over-function, but invest all of God’s self in every moment to every fiber of creation so that creation, atom by atom, and day and night can help us offer our yes to the moments we are given.
Having been born in Waukesha, educated in Waukesha, and served there for 14 years—I have family there and deep spiritual bonds across the community. At the time of this writing, I know only that we are grieving six dead and fifty injured from a man who drove into the back of the holiday parade. More detail will come and with it, particulars we must lament, grieve, and overcome. We know the people of Kenosha are still lamenting the losses in their community. Next week there will be another tragedy, but we are people of hope—deep spiritual anticipation of wholeness, the One that will come.
For this Sunday Luke 1:77 promises a child will give us knowledge of salvation: healing, rescue, deliverance, wholeness, and Shalom that is present and eternal. Watch with your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness that in everything God may be glorified.
“Advent is a time of anticipation that One will come who knows our needs and limitations and will help us overcome them.” One will come. Thanks be to God.