December 1, 2024
First Sunday of Advent
Click the white arrowhead to the left above for some relaxing music while you read.
You may repeat click if you wish. Click double bars to stop.
In today’s cell phone-saturated culture, it seems hard to believe that, in the years just after WWII, not every household had a phone. A nice little living could be made as a “runner”, a kid who answered the phone at the corner drugstore and then ran to a neighborhood house to tell someone they had a call. By the time that neighbor got back to take the call, a good ten minutes might have passed. It was definitely not an “instant society”.
Our house was lucky enough to have a phone, but we shared a “party line”. There was a family at the end of the block who used the same phone line as we did. I was taught as a little girl to very gently lift the receiver when I made a call, just in case Mr. Lambing was already on the phone. He often was, which meant that our family could not receive or make calls. Someone else had the line.
Sometimes that’s a good description of our relationship with God and our spirituality. Even though a direct line is available to us, we opt to share that line with a thousand other distractions. In this season, many of us find ourselves remembering to reflect or pray only after we have shopped, cooked, cleaned, mounted the snow tires, and put in the storm windows. When we think about lifting the receiver to talk with our souls, somebody else is already on the line – maybe somebody named “Mercedes Benz”, “J.C. Penney” or “Jim Beam”.
In the Christian tradition, we begin the season of Advent today. It is a time of waiting, preparation, and hope for the coming of God’s grace in our lives. Every religious tradition has such times: Ramadan, Lent, the Jewish holy days of Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur. Like these, Advent is a time to remember our deep relationship to our Creator and to freshen that intimacy through prayer and acts of generosity.
We need to remember that we are “blue-toothed” into God’s heart. We are like the people who wear those earbuds (who we thought were talking to us in the airport or supermarket.) We are so connected to God that all we have to do is let our hearts speak and God hears us. The challenge is that many of us have forgotten how to understand the answering language of God – the language of trust, patience, receptivity, clarity, wisdom, and silence. Sometimes, it’s really, really hard to find God’s message in the garble of our lives. It may seem like all we hear is the static of strained relationships, economic challenges, or unrealized dreams. But deep inside even all of that, God’s Word is seeking us with a message of unconditional love.
In this Holy Season, whatever our religious tradition, let’s take the time to clear our “party lines” through prayer and quiet reflection, so that all God has to do is speak – maybe through the beauty of a starlit winter night, or the gift of an honest, loving conversation, or the blessed recognition that most of us really already have everything we need – so that all God has to do is speak and we will hear.
For Your Reflection:
- What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
- Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
- What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
Lavish Mercy 