There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged.
[St. Paul’s Letter to the Christians in Rome, 5.3-4, The Message]
It’s that time of year when it’s natural to look back over the previous seasons and reflect on what did and didn’t happen. With a mixture of grief and gratitude, we look ahead to the approaching winter and the year beyond.
What comes next for you?
This isn’t a plug for making new year’s resolutions. Rather, it’s an invitation to consider during Advent the kind of choices you have been making. Past decisions profoundly determine what often comes next for us.
For Christians around the world, this season is named Advent, which begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day. The first Sunday of Advent is New Year’s Day for the Christian church, the emphasis being on the much anticipated coming again (advent) of the Lord Jesus Christ to our world.
Advent focuses on the promise that Christ will come again soon to make right every wrong and personally lead the world into justice, truth, beauty, and love. Not coercively, but courageously, embodying in himself what was originally intended for humanity – for Jesus, the means are the end.
Imagine how this belief can shape how you interpret your past and present decisions, as well as your future expectations and fears. Christians can be motivated by a beautifully compelling vision of the future which we strive to embody now in everyday life.
When we muse on what is next, it is not a blank slate. Christians around the world can count on the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost to shape our prayers, our perspective, and our participation in the complicated and often painful world unfolding in front of us.
We are not adrift in a world of random chaos or hopeless unhappiness. But it can sometimes seem like that if we keep our eyes on our selves. Rather, trials and troubles can keep us alert for whatever God will do next, as embodied in the Christian calendar.
It may seem cheesy or naively spiritualistic to suggest that the Christian calendar can be a source of courage for how we look into the future. Maybe it is.
But consider how submitting to Christ and the Scriptures through it can develop a patience perspective in us, which in turn can forge much-needed virtue:
The twelve days of Christmas focus on the mysterious way God keeps his promises to his people – people that disbelieve him, mock him, reject him, and ignore him. Christmas is first about loyalty, faithfulness, reconciliation, and new beginnings that have not just a lifetime in mind, but millenniums.
These days are followed by what Christians call Epiphany, a week of Sundays where we pay attention to the stories of men and women awakening to the reality of Christ Jesus in their world. The wise men, John the Baptist, the wedding miracle at Cana. They all experienced epiphanies, eyes to see the ways Christ has already come, ways he is becoming real and present in our world.
After this is Lent, 40 days, not including Sundays, when Christians reflect on their present existence in penitence and humility. In light of how stubbornly prideful and passively aggressive people tend to be, we need this season more than we want to admit.
This preparation ahead of the Easter season give us context for 49 days of breathing new life into what is good and beautiful. It’s a season to renew our energy for acts of justice and mercy so that in our community life flourishes for all.
The seven weeks of Pentecost that come next inspire Christians with the expectation of God keeping his promises to empower his creative and redeeming love to flourish in the world through the body of Christ – his people fueled by the Spirit of God.
It is Advent now: what is coming next for you? Or, who is coming next?
As you’ve probably begun to realize, what you choose to do eventually begins to choose for you.
Sometimes our failure to control our future stems from not understanding the inherent consequences of past decisions. We live in an existence exuding entropy – everything eventually declines into disorder.
Unless an outside force resists the dis-bonding of people, where does the energy come from to reconnect, reconcile, and courageously forge a renewed future together?
May it be Christ in you.
This Advent, may Christ Jesus come to you (again), his holy and courageous love surrounding you; may he be to your left and your right, Christ above and below, behind and ahead of you, Christ next to you as you exude patience, forge virtue, getting ready for what comes next.
The earliest Christians prayed “Mara natha!” – Come, Lord Jesus!
This Advent, (re)choose Christ.
This Advent, “Mara natha.”
