Waiting for God in a Season of Anguish - Advent
Our family loves Advent. There is no other season, not even Christmas, that our family goes quite so all out for. We decorate our home for the season. Every night we gather around the Advent wreath, light candles, and sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Then we read a section from the Bible, starting with creation, all the way through to the coming of Jesus, placing ourselves in the story, waiting for the strange and beautiful ending where God will come in Jesus. We hang an ornament on our Jesse tree. There’s wonder in these days for our family.
And yet… It’s easy to forget that many things in which we find great comfort and connection emerged out of seasons of anguish. The lessons and carols service, for example, emerged as the church sought to respond to the emotional wreckage caused by the first World War.
Closer to home, the year our family started our Advent traditions was proceeded by traumatic events. We needed the holy habits of Advent to cope with disappointment, grief, and loss.
Isaiah 40:1-11, a familiar Advent passage, is a poem born in anguish, but we seem to have mostly forgotten. When read sung each December they evoke positive feelings of security, warm cider, close relationships, and holiday cheer. We forget the anguish into which these words were written, and the condition into which they speak.
Isaiah 40, emerging in a season of anguish offers 3 distinct voices that point us to God; the voice of comfort, the voice of restoration, and the voice of relationship with God.
The voice of Comfort
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord's hand
double for all her sins.
The voice of comfort assures a community in exile that suffering, and judgment is not the end. Conquered people are tempted to believe that God has abandoned them. A conquered people might be tempted to turn from God and instead worship the power of the empire in its economic dominance, military prowess, and ability to exercise political will.
The voice of comfort says, “No.” God has not abandoned you. God is at work, even in judgment, even in exile.
Some of us balk at any talk of God and judgment. This is because, at least according to Boston University professor Dr. Peter Kreeft, we live in a cultural moment where we have collapsed, the virtues of love, compassion, and goodness all into kindness. And since, we rightly believe God is loving, compassionate, and good we assume therefore that God’s deepest nature is to be kind. (Judgment doesn’t fit with our image of kindness.)
But, according to Peter Kreeft, this is a distortion of God’s character. Kindness has to do with being friendly, generous, and considerate. It has to do with treating others as ‘kin’. It is a virtue. The New Testament even commands us to show kindness to one another. However, while it is not incompatible with the nature of God to include the conviviality associated with kindness, Kreeft’s argues that God’s truest nature corresponds more deeply to the virtue of mercy. Mercy is compassion or forgiveness shown to someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm. In a fallen, corrupted, and corruptible world God isn’t, ‘nice’. It’s so much better than that…God’s deepest nature is to be merciful.
That’s why the bible demonstrates God’s love as combative and confrontational as well as compassionate and gentle. That’s why in scripture God’s goodness makes moral demands and provides rescue from sin. That’s why God’s is revealed as both compassionate and critical.
In the desolation and anguish brought on by our own sin, the sin of others, or just the vulnerability of a fallen world, God’s first word to his people is comfort. God sees you. God’s mercy is open to you, today, whatever situation of captivity, judgment, or exile you’re living in.
The fist voice is the voice of comfort. God is at work. The Lord will restore justice.
The Voice of Restoration
A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
The image here is of work being done in preparation for a royal visitation. There are roads that need to be built and relationships that need to be set right. The damages done by injustice, unrest, and trauma need active undoing. It is insufficient to receive the promise of comfort, we need to get our shovels out and begin building for the Lord’s return.
“I think we should do this project,” Sophia said, handing me a few slips of paper. On one was a table of readings. On the other was a pattern for decorations. “We need to do something,” she continued, “maybe this will help us.” She was right. A few weeks earlier we held each other and wept, as grief, pain, disappointment, and rage swirled inside. All of our decisions about ministry, calling, God’s provision, and even our sense of stability was overwhelmed by a shockingly painful set of circumstances.
Little did I know that hours of stitching, stuffing, and sealing later we’d emerge with a family tradition to anchor us in the story of God and in our relationships with one another. Reflecting now, I wonder how often simple, practical, actions lead to hope, health, and transformation.
Isaiah’s vision summons the hearers to prepare for the Lord’s return to Zion. The voice promises that what was broken will be restored. This is not a message for philosophical contemplation, it’s a call for shovels. There is simple, practical, work to be done.
What would need to happen in your home for God’s glory to be revealed more fully there? What would need to happen in your school, or workplace for God’s glory to be revealed more fully there? What needs to be ‘filled in’, what needs to be ‘raised up’?
In the midst of anguish God speaks a word of comfort and a word of calling. We fill in and raise up in a way that anticipates the day when God’s glory will be revealed and everyone sees it together.
The voice of Relationship with God
A voice says, “Cry out!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand for ever.
I love Isaiah’s utter realism about human beings. There is unflinching confrontation with the reality of human frailty, weakness, and limitation. Sometimes we get this idea that to be godly, or spiritually robust is to be without weakness, fault, or inconsistency. But here the voice is crying out “all people are grass”. God is not unaware of our weaknesses, sin, and inconstancy. God knows all about that and invites us into relationship anyway. We don’t need to be smart, powerful, rich, good looking, or talented. We don’t need to be nuanced, culturally sophisticated, highly educated, or socially powerful. In fact, most of those things get in the way of us having relationship with God.
Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.
This final section contrasts what people are like with what God is like. God is powerful, just, and mighty. God is also the shepherd king who is tender and merciful. God carries the vulnerable in his arms and gently leads the mother sheep. God has no rivals in the scope and totality of his power. God has no equal in the depths of his tenderness and compassion.
Do we know God like that? Advent gives us the chance to be overwhelmed by the majesty, beauty, and power of God, while being simultaneously dumbstruck by God’s tenderness and compassion? Advent invites us discover life with God, even in seasons of anguish.