Energy at the Midpoint of Advent

You may know that Advent is the start of the church year, those liturgical rhythms that many churches follow worldwide that lead us through observing Lent, Easter, Ordinary Time, etc. Advent represents the start of that calendar cycle, and the invitation to see time differently - to actively wait again for the Good News incarnate, Jesus the Messiah, to interrupt our days and calendars and bring life, hope, and truth. But Advent happens within our daily lives, as our schedules fill up and online calendar mtngs send us reminders on our phones; the real world keeps on moving along, and so we have to work to resist its pull on our time, our orientation, our daily life. 

Theologian Walter Bruggemann writes a beautiful reminder about how to keep up our energy at the midpoint of Advent in his devotional book, "Celebrating Abundance." He names that many times in scripture, the people of God lost their energy and focus, sometimes even experiencing burnout, or the fear that the gospel that we say we believe might have failed. He names the truth of how our day to day rhythms often tire us out and distract us from faith, even as Advent seeks to orient us to the story of God. 

Bruggemann writes,

"This news is for the faint in the church, those who have run out of steam, run out of patience, run out of courage, run out of imagination, out of generosity. The reason we have run out is that we have believed the world too much. We have listened to the Babylonians. We have yearned too much for the American dream. And people who get caught in Babylonian or American dreams wind up without energy for faith and mission. 

But as we focus on the God who is free and restless and at work, we break the spell of the empire, and we are free again.... Dear ones, it is time to move toward the things we know best. They are our very life, and to them we are summoned: justice, mercy, compassion, peace. All you who are weary and heavily laden, take the yoke of Christ - rest and obey!" 

I pray as we each hold the competing demands of this season - the everyday life that rumbles on and the otherworldly hope, peace, joy and love of Advent - that we remember to orient our time toward God. That we take a moment to look up, recognize what stories and dreams we've been told that are draining us, and instead choose to dream the dreams of God that point us to. That we have space for rest, for obeying who God says we are, for those things we know best and are summoned to again. May the energy of Advent time, and the presence of our free and restless God, be with you this season. 

- Rev. Liz