First Day of Advent

Readings from the Common Book of Prayer: Psalm 1,3,4,8, Isaiah 1:1-20,
Mark 1:1-13


Day of Visitation,
Greetings,
Knock upon the door,
"So happy to see you."
Listening,
Knowing nods,
Beautiful chaos,
Breaking bread,
The unexpected,
should never be unexpected.
No meeting is by chance.

"As we move into Advent we are called to listen, something we seldom take time to do in this frenetic world of over-activity. But waiting for birth, waiting for death----these are listening times, when the normal distractions of life have lost their power to take us away from God's call to center in Christ.

During Advent we are traditionally called to contemplate death, judgment, hell and heaven. To give birth to a baby is also a kind of death----death to the incredible intimacy of carrying a child, death to old ways of life and birth into new-----and it is as strange for parents as for the baby. Judgment: John of the Cross says that in the evening of life we shall be judged on love; not on our accomplishments, not on our successes and failures in the worldly sense; but solely on love.
Once again, as happened during the past nearly two thousand years, predictions are being made of the time of this Second Coming, which, Jesus emphasized. "even the angels in heaven do not know." But we human creatures, who are "a little lower than the angels," too frequently try to set ourselves above them with our predictions and our arrogant assumption of knowledge which God hid even from the angels. Advent is not a time to declare, but to listen, to listen to whatever God may want to tell us through the singing of the stars, the quickening of a baby, the gallantry of a dying man.
Listen. Quietly. Humbly. Without arrogance."

Madeline L'Engle