Waiting for the Magnolia to Bloom

 In terms of popularity, Christmas is clearly the king of the holidays. The top of the food chain. The big enchilada. Insert your favorite superlative here. It’s hard to compete with special songs, lights, decorations, trees in your house, and presents. Everyone loves to be given a gift. Not everyone loves to wait until December 25th to receive a gift.  I would ask for a show of hands for those those who can’t wait until Christmas morning and always get your presents early — or even worse, unwrap them and rewrap them — but there’s no need, we already know who you are. Truth is, none of us really LIKE to wait. We may HAVE to wait or be WILLING to wait, but I dare say none of us like to wait. We may not like to wait but we NEED to learn to wait, precisely because sometimes we have to wait.

Ours is an age of instant gratification, and while that can be really wonderful in some cases — like finding a bathroom when you really need one or a parking spot when you’re in a hurry — it also comes at a cost. If we can be honest with ourselves, we have to admit that the anticipation is what makes the realization so great. Sometimes the anticipation is better. Look at it this way, if you are really wanting to eat some dish or dessert that someone only makes once a year, say at Christmas, once you eat it, it’s over. That joy may last a few minutes while you are eating it and then the plate is empty and give it a few more hours and your belly will be empty again too. Now think about the days, weeks, perhaps months you spent looking forward to, getting excited about when you finally get to sit down to that delicious whatever it is. The actual enjoying of it is quite fleeting, but the buildup, the anticipation, which is its own kind of joy if you learn to love it, can last a long, long time. When we can get whatever we want, whenever we want, for as long as we want, we lose the blessing of anticipation.

Fortunately for us, there is a holiday, or better yet, a holiday season that is designed to teach us to learn to appreciate waiting, or at least learn how to wait, even if we don’t enjoy it. I’ve written before about Advent, very recently in fact, but I love it so much that I just can’t get enough of it this time of year. Probably because you have to wait for it for eleven months. 

For those who celebrate Advent, the season is all about identifying with our ancestors who waited for millennia, often times in darkness, sadness, suffering, fear, and loss, for God to come a bring help, hope, happiness, deliverance. For thousands of years their cry was “How long?” Their waiting wasn’t about anticipation but endurance. They waited and waited and cried and prayed and through it all continued to trust God. To say the payoff was worth the wait is an understatement. All they wanted was relief from their sufferings, but what they got was Jesus. When the waiting was over they were left with so much more than they ever imagined. Early on, very few people realized what had come with the arrival of this little baby — His parents, a couple of cousins, a few shepherds and magi — but just wait until He grows up. Everyone will know.

This story and this season has really taken up a lot of space in my mind lately. We too are waiting with an anticipation that cannot be contained. We too are asking, “How long, O Lord?” In Tennessee, Magnolia’s bloom in the Spring, but since they are an evergreen, they are popular centerpieces for holiday tables. The centerpiece of our season is waiting fo our little Magnolia Mae to bloom. We thought she would be here by now, maybe even home enjoying the bedroom that mom and dad, grandparents, friends, aunts, uncles and cousins have spent months preparing just for her. Her mama spent the last three days in the hospital letting the doctors and nurses put her through quite a bit of discomfort and outright pain, in an effort to induce the arrival of this little girl, to no avail. All the family gathered at the hospital waiting to erupt with celebration, somberly dispersed and went back to our normal routines. Everyone is disappointed and a little sad, so we go back to waiting and anticipating, and that’s ok. When the fulness of time was come God sent forth His Son, and when His time has come He will send us our little Magnolia Mae. Until then, we will shed a few tears, wait and pray and continue to trust God.

Right now Maggie is somewhat suspended between two worlds. She is very much real and alive, but she’s not yet here with us face to face, so a part of her remains in the presence of her Creator too. Perhaps He is already using her to bless us and teach us, even before she is fully with us. Maybe this is her way of reminding us that so many of the things we focus on, while blessings, aren’t ultimately that important. A baby can lay in a manger just fine, the important thing is we make room in our hearts and lives to love this new little life that God is giving us. Driving home from the hospital last night I couldn’t help but be reminded, before you get to Christmas you have to get through Advent. You have to learn to wait, anticipate, and through it all, trust God to give good gifts when the time is right.

Later in his life, I bet the Innkeeper wished he'd made more room than he thought he had for Jesus. Me too, and little Magnolia’s delayed arrival is a good reminder that there is no better way to spend the time while we are waiting than to create more room in my heart for HIm. Out of the mouths of babes…

For Everything There Is A Season...A Time For Everything Under The Sun

     E=MC2 is arguably the most well known equation of all time. People who don’t even know what an equation actually is, know this equation. I am one of those people by the way. When people hear the name Albert Einstein they think of two things: 1) his rather memorable hairstyle and 2) his even more memorable equation, E=MC2. Over the years I’ve come to know that this equation (which represents that energy is equal to matter multiplied by the speed of light squared) is part of his theory of relativity. To make a long story short, Einstein discovered that time is not constant. In the Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein determined that time is relative—in other words, the rate at which time passes depends on your frame of reference. With all due respect to Einstein and his incredible contributions to the realm of science, disciples of Jesus have long known this fact in the realm of faith.

    Asking the question, “What time is is?” seems simple enough, until you consider the fact that not all groups of people observe time the same way. Civilians might say “The meeting will begin at 6pm”, someone in the military might refer to this same meeting as occurring at 1800 hours. The civilian keeps time based on a twelve hour cycle, whereas the military utilizes a twenty-four hour clock. If you’ve ever visited a Chinese restaurant then you have likely noticed that the calendar they observe is different from the one observed in the West. To borrow from Einstein’s theory, time is relative to the different cultures and people groups observing it.

    There is an ancient tradition where followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob marked time according to their relationship with God. In Exodus 12, while still in Egypt, God prepared the Israelites to begin marking time differently. The event now known as the Passover, the seminal event in Hebrew history, would transform the way in which they observed time. The month in which the Passover occurred would now be the first month of the year. In time, the entire Jewish calendar would revolved around three principal feasts: Passover, Pentecost and Sukkot (feast of booths). 

    In much the same way, ancient Christians, beginning as early as the third century, began to keep sacred time by commemorating God’s redemptive acts and continual blessings through Jesus. This time revolves around two divine movements of God: the incarnation and the resurrection. In time, this restructuring of time in view of Jesus, came to be known as the Liturgical or Christian Calendar. Much like the secular calendar in the West, which has four seasons (Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall), the Christian calendar has its own seasons: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week/Passover, Easter, and Pentecost. These seasons are less about identifying precise dates for certain events in the life of Jesus, and more about taking time to reflect upon, celebrate and in our own ways, imitate the life and works of Jesus.

    I didn’t grow up in a religious tradition that observed, or even recognized, the Christian calendar, but it was something I adopted on my own several years ago and my faith has been blessed immeasurably by it. To borrow from Lauren Winner in the Foreword of Living the Christian Year by Bobby Gross, “First, I want the Christian story to shape everything I do, even how I reckon time. I want it to be truer and more essential to me than school's calendar, or Hallmark's calendar, or the calendar set by the IRS. I want the rhythms of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost to be more basic to my life than the days on which my quarterly estimated taxes are due.” Living the Christian calendar forces us to live inside the story of Jesus. My friend Wes McAdams is want to say, “The first step of discipleship in the modern era: Learn to see yourself as a supporting character in a story about Jesus, rather than the main character in a story about you.”

    Most all of our lives have a rhythm they follow, usually based around certain seasons we tend to orbit. If you are a hunter, deer season is likely the seminal event of your year. For sports fans it might be opening day of baseball season or the first game that kicks off football season. For school teachers it is the school year and for CPA’s it’s tax season, and for the farmer it is planting and harvest seasons. Nothing is wrong with observing or enjoying these seasons, but none of them are worthy of serving as the focal point of our lives. It is in God that we live and move and have our very being (Acts 17:28). And that is precisely why I began altering the way I observe time to revolve around Him.

    Not all traditions and believers follow identical patterns, but generally speaking there are three cycles to the year: the cycle of light (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany), the cycle of life (Lent, Holy Week/Passover and Easter) and the cycle of love (Pentecost or Ordinary time). The cycle of light is all about the True Light of the world (John 1) coming into the world of darkness and overcoming it. The cycle of life is about how God saves us from death through the life of Jesus. The cycle of love is focused on us living the love of Jesus in our everyday lives by loving God and our neighbors as ourselves. 

    My personal favorite time of the year is upon us and is the inspiration for me writing this. Advent has become the most beautiful, challenging, inspiring and powerful season of the year for me personally. It is the beginning of the Christian year and was the beginning of my journey into the Liturgical year. The word “advent” means coming or arrival, and refers to the time leading up to the incarnation, the coming of God in the flesh as the baby Jesus. 

    This season begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and reaches its climax with Christmas Day. For a great many people, Christmas is the highpoint of the year, and precisely for that reason, the Christmas season begins so early it practically starts on Halloween night. But Advent is about waiting, something our modern age struggles with mightily. The aim of Advent is to slow down, learn to be still and to be quiet in the presence of God as we wait for Him to act. Advent is not Christmas. Advent is stepping into the story of our spiritual ancestors who lived and suffered in a cold and barbaric world but never lost hope that God would come and make all things new. Advent is trusting through the darkness, looking to the East and the rising of the star that signified the long night had ended and light was dawning.

    Advent is also a season of repentance, it forces us to look upon and sit in the darkness that exists in the world, in our lives and in our own hearts. We listen to the voices of the poets and prophets from long ago as they cry out to God “How long, O Lord?” How long? A very long time. Hundreds of years, thousands of years, but then, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” (Isaiah 9:2). After so long, after so much anticipation, the darkness was overcome by the light of life. “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12). And yet, we know that darkness still exists. The arrival of Jesus changed the world for the better, forever, it saved the world, but there is still darkness to be conquered. Advent is about living in that tension between the light that has come, the darkness that still plagues, and the light that is to come. It embodies both singing and weeping and the causes we have for both, often simultaneously.  

    My love of Advent was expanded a couple of years ago when our family was anticipating the arrival of our own little boy, my first grandchild. Nearly three thousand years ago Isaiah wrote, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” Scriptures you’ve read and contemplated your entire life can suddenly be seen afresh, like the dazzle in a diamond when struck by a new light. Or perhaps it is like a treasure that has always been present, unearthed by erosion and suddenly visible. This isn’t the first time this scripture has been seen in a different light. When the prophet Isaiah recorded these words they carried significance for the royal court and the current state of affairs, and yet, it would be another seven hundred years before the full gravity of his words would be felt. A child would be born, a son, and everything would change. The whole world would be different, everything redefined and reshaped.

    One cold and dark night, two years ago, I contemplated the words of Isaiah and the story of Jesus and I wrote these words to my (then) unborn grandson:

I’ve never met you, I don’t know what you look like or even what you will like, but I am already                        fully and completely in love with you. My heart is swollen and strained at all times, trying in vain to contain the emotions your existence has produced in me. Just a phrase, a sound, a song or a sight and tears overflow my eyes like so much water breaching a feeble dam. Though I am electrified with excitement and anticipation, a part of me envisions our meeting with dread because I know I will not be able to maintain any modicum of dignity, in fact I fear I may not even be able to stand. Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.

Reflecting on him, my grandson, forced me to look up to Him, my Father and echo these words:

I’ve never met you, I don’t know what you look like or even what you will be like, but I am already         fully and completely in love with you. My heart is swollen and strained at all times, trying in vain to contain the emotions your existence has produced in me. just a phrase, a sound, a song or a sight and tears overflow my eyes like so much water breaching a feeble dam. Though I am electrified with excitement and anticipation, a part of me envisions our meeting with dread because I know I will not be able to maintain any modicum of dignity, in fact I fear I may even be able to stand. Is this why you give us children? Is this why you created the reproductive cycle the way you did? Is it to teach us, to prepare us, to reach us? Is it meant to teach us that it’s possible to love that which we cannot see? If a love of this magnitude is merely a foretaste, a speck compared to the love we will know in you, how will I be able to endure it? The love that I have known nearly pulls me apart at the seams, stretching and straining the very fibers of my being in its more powerful moments. How can it be? Am I wrong, will it not fill me, but rather absorb me? Will I, will we, be part of what fills it? 

    Two years later, we sit on the precipice of another Advent season and await the birth of another child. Any day now I will get to meet my first granddaughter and once again the words filling my mind are those of Isaiah. Unto us ANOTHER child is born and all of those same powerful emotions are running rampant in my heart. The only difference this time is I now know what to expect, so I anticipate and I wait in hope. In much the same way, I already know what it means for Christ to come into my life and the difference it made, but I also wait in anticipation of His coming to make all things new, when there will be no night.