Advent does not bring to my mind hope for some miraculous intrusion of the divine into our everyday lives. This season inevitably leads me to reflect on the homely ways in which the divine is already there in our lives—ways that we overlook as we hunger for miraculous intrusion.
- Bilgrimage, Advent: Finding
Bill has a very interesting reflection on the nature of Church and Family and applies it to his interpretation of Advent, a time that innately emphasizes the ordinary and everday ways we experience the Love of God in our lives through our homes even as we over look them in hunger for something greater, or as Bill puts it, a miraculous intrusion.
But what is the miraculous intrusion? We all celebrate the birth of our God and most exchange gifts, and we've all heard the Gospel message of our God, but have we listened?
God is the God of Power and Might, and heaven and earth are full of his glory - so say Hossana in the highest! But how does our God as great as he is come to greet us; what is the miraculous intrusion we look for and how does it really come about?
Is he in the thunder? the earthquake or the fire? No, he's in a whisper.
Our miraculous intrusion comes to us not in the Palace birthing rooms, it is not the proclamation of Porphyrogennētos - but in a lowly manger and is as frail as any other poor hungry child on the streets. It's through the nail-scarred hands of a teacher, a friend to fishermen, a good son who listens to his mother who shares bread and kindness with friends and stranger a like, not in steel of an acomplished general from the field, the proclomations of a revered oracle, the pontifications of a wise man, nor the crown of a wealthy King that we experience our God.
It's an important reminder that at this time of year though we do look for divine intervention, a miraculous intrusion - the greatness of that miracle often is in its banality, in its everydayness. As Bill says, it is in
a warm house to come home to at the end of the day. As in candles in windows when it grows dark outside earlier and earlier. As in family and friends who care enough to cook a meal for us, to set a table for us, to smile and hug us when we come through the door. As in bread, wine, salt, oil, water, the basics of life that become vehicles of encounter with the divine in sacramentally oriented religious traditions.We value these things all too little. Advent calls us to remember them and their significance in our lives.
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