On November 30 we entered the season of Advent - a time of waiting and longing - a time of expectation and hope - a time of yearning for the second coming of our God when all things will be made new; the broken will be made whole; the sick will be strong; the wounded will be healed; pain will cease and everlasting joy will follow.
Ever since my first year of going through the church calendar at Calvin College, I have grown to love the season of Advent. I love the honesty that it brings to everyday life. I love that it brings a recognition that things are not the way they should be and that there is hope for a day when the wrong will be made right, when the broken will be put together again and there will be no more tears of sadness, anger or frustration.
More than a few people in my life that I really care about have either gone through a horrendous circumstance in the past year or are currently experiencing one. There are times when I feel so hopeless and get caught up yearning and longing for things to be the way they were meant to be...yet I know that God holds the world - including our joys and sorrows - in his hands and I cling to the hope that one day he
will come and restore the world to full
shalom.
In one of my theology classes I heard for the first time the phrase "the already and the not yet" to describe our present circumstances as Christians. We are living in the time of "the already", meaning that Christ has already come, died, rose again and has given us the promise of eternity with him as well as the presence of the Holy Spirit to council us - we have this hope
now; yet we are also living in the time of "the not yet", meaning that Christ has yet to return to reconcile all things to him and make all things new; meaning that we live in a very broken world full of very real hurts and very real pains.
How do we live as an Advent people? How do we live in this time of the "already" and the "not yet"? How do we have hope and assurance, yet wait and hurt and long at the same time? How can we believe in a God that is good, loving, gracious and merciful, yet see so many hurts, pains and unexplainable sorrows around us that do not match with God's character? I could say quite a bit about how those two things can, to an extent, co-exist in a broken, sinful world...but there are times when, no matter how long I've been a Christian, no matter how many Bible and theology courses I have taken, no matter what I've learned about God's goodness through painful past life experiences, I just can't make any sense of the hurt, can't see any redeeming value in it and long for the day when Christ will return to heal the brokenness and restore the world to himself.
I love God. I trust him. I know that he has the world and my life and my loved ones' lives in his hands...but I hate the brokenness of the world. I hate that awful things have to happen. I hate that I have to sit back helplessly and watch as people hurt all around me, and I along with them. Yet I believe that God grieves over the brokenness, too, with full realization that things are not as he created them to be...yet smiles with the full knowledge that things will not always be this way. There is hope. The light has come...the light is coming again.
In the meantime, we wait as people of Advent - people of hope - between the already and the not yet.
"Sorrow and Joy" Christ Church Cathedral
