Advent: Sowing in Grief

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those who dreamed.

Our mouths were filled with laughter,

our tongues with songs of joy.

Then it was said among the nations,

“The Lord has done great things for them.”

The Lord has done great things for us,

and we are filled with joy.

Restore our fortunes, Lord,

like streams in the Negev.

Those who reap with songs of joy.

those who go out weeping,

carrying seed to sow,

will return with songs of joy,

carrying sheaves with them.

Psalm 126

The advent season begins with waiting.

We remember the waiting of Israel: The hopes and longings of the Old Testament prophets for a time when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14); The groans of the people of God: “How long oh Lord?” (Ps. 13:1) The long experience of homelessness and exile: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Ps. 137:4)

“Likewise, the Spirit also helps us in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray… but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (Rom. 8:25)

Advent begins with our groanings. Our groanings for relief, for peace, for the wounds of our hearts to be healed. For the fulfilment of our deep longings for presence and belonging; for hope, justice, and goodness; for the Joy of delight that “thrills through your being.” Advent begins with the aches in our souls: that grief, longing, pain, and absence that we do not have the courage to name or notice. Advent begins with our inadequacy, guilt, and shame. Advent begins with the deepest desires of the human heart—those insatiable hungers that we so often supress, avoid, or numb through cheap thrills. Advent begins here in the groaning darkness because these deepest aches of our souls are our longing for home.

Like the groans of the prophets, our human longings are a prayer thrust out into the dark: “My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” (Psalm 84:3) What the scriptures announce to us as the good news of Christmas is that the longing of our flesh, the God of our deepest yearnings, has made his home with us in Jesus Christ. Exactly in the place of our deepest groaning, our most profound, unnameable lack and grief, our deepest sense of inadequacy and shame, the place of our most profound sense of not being enough—this is the place that God has identified with. This is the place that God has entered into—this deepest place of longing and absence, this part of ourselves we dare not bring into the light:

“That part of you. That is the actual person that God loves. That’s the person that God died to redeem.” That’s the person for whom God became flesh “to adopt you as a member of his family.”[1]

Advent calls us to bring our sorrows, our longings, our inadequacies into the loving light of God. We are given the courage to do this because God has come to us in our human flesh and has loved us where we cannot love ourselves. And because God has done this for us, we are given hope that light can come from our darkest places, mercy from our places of deepest shame, and that:

Prayer:

Dear heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ, indwelling Holy Spirit—we are homesick for you. Thank you for planting in every human heart this desire and capacity to respond to you. You have pursued us with love. In sending Jesus to provide salvation, you have lavished kindness upon us. You always call us home, feeding our hunger, satisfying our thirst. Come to us anew, Lord Jesus and make your home in our willing hearts. Amen.[2]

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[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-mockingpulpit/id682011512?i=1000636953917

[2] Adapted from Marriam Dixon and Margret Campbell, Meditations on the Birth of Jesus: A Renovaré Advent Resource for Spiritual Renewal, 2019, 9-10.

The featured image is called “Grief” by Stephen Howell