Advent Day Eight, December 8, 2024
Here we are already, a week into this journey of waiting as one in this season of darkening days, waiting for the winter solstice, waiting for Christmas, waiting for Hannukah, waiting for a new year to begin, waiting to see what life will be like in 2025, waiting to see what it may ask of us. Advent is a season of anticipation, yes, but it also is a season tinged with a bit of fear or uncertainty about the unknown. Surely that’s how the parents of the infant Jesus felt. After waiting to get to Bethlehem, then what? After waiting for the birth, then what? What would come next? We’re even told that Mary “pondered all that was happening in her heart” (Luke 2: 9). No doubt many of us are pondering the same.
As I thought about how time isn’t really linear, but spiral, or circular, or anything but straight, the words of Dag Hammarskjold came to me again. I’ve used them before in other blogs about other situations and so I hope that over time, their meaning has slowly been influencing my sense of waiting. Hammarskjold was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, his career cut short by a fatal plane accident. At the beginning of his term in 1953, he wrote this affirmation: “For all that has been, Thanks! For all that will be, Yes!” He wrote it as the world was still recovering from the horrors of WWII and as wars continued to break out in Korea, the Congo, the Middle East, and South America, not unlike today. How does anyone say “thanks” in a season of darkness?
Further, how do we say “yes” to the unknown, especially when we suspect it will be radically different from what we’ve known, filled with more political division, more racial unrest, more natural disasters, more broken traditions and discounted values that we held inviolable, along with whatever personal challenges come our way? In this season, this now, can we have Hammarskjold’s kind of trust, faithfulness, and perseverance to say yes?
I don’t have the answers to these questions for you. As I wait, I have to ask and answer them for myself. I do believe, though, that if we can be Advent People who are willing to risk saying thanks and yes we can help transform a weary world grown tired of waiting for hope.
Philippians 4:4-7: “Rejoice (say Yes!) in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Blessings ~ Rosemary
Spirit Reflections 