Advent Sight: an introduction

Immersing myself in the Advent texts remind me to see things differently. The texts demonstrate that God’s work often happens differently than we anticipate. The stories invite us to open our lives to wonder and open our hearts to perceive beyond what we visibly expect to come to pass. The Advent text and stories help us to reinterpret our current circumstances in light of God’s promises and faithful action throughout time – even though many of ‘those times’ people felt like God had forgotten or gave up on them, if God ever really existed or cared at all.

Sometimes the Advent and Christmas seasons come full of sentimental feelings and hopes for both past idealized times and a better future. In Christian stories, we want a God who is present and brings peace on earth, yet how do we live honestly into those wishes when our experiences seem to demonstrate the opposite?

Praying the Psalms already helps us to “speak what we feel and not what we ought to say” about our hope and fears, our faith and doubt – our true feelings about God, God’s action, and God’s absence. And I wonder how exploring these Advent texts can teach us a similar way of seeing. I wonder how they can give us some insight into God’s mysterious ways or into truths about ourselves. I wonder how we can cultivate some Advent Sight during this Advent season.

The term 20/20 implies clarity, yet we know that in 2020 things did not become clearer for many people. The saying goes that hindsight is 20/20, yet I think many people want to put 2020 behind and never look back.

So, I wonder how looking with Advent Sight can help us to see God’s faithfulness amidst the calamities of 2020.

I wonder how looking forward with Advent Sight can help us to reinterpret the stories of our lives within a much greater story of God’s faithfulness to restore all of Creation.

(I hope to write some more about this in coming days… we’ll see…)