Bid Our Sad Divisions Cease
We have come to the end of work week and just a day left in the first week of Advent.
Hope.
One bright candle this week has burned for Hope.
Burning for hope. I find that true of us all. I think we could say we burn for hope this year.
Really we all burn for hope year after year, we just usually have enough of our life put together we think that hope resides in us, in our abilities, our wealth or whits, our control, and our confidence that we are the drivers of our own destiny. This year we find ourselves forced to face the reality that we often sing and seldom acknowledge: I cannot save myself. Hope has to come from outside of me, it has to come from outside of us.
Our hope cannot be in political power - party, president, policy, or the like. Out hope cannot be in material goods or meager acts of righteousness, but our hope is the overwhelming reality that God longs to be near to us. That He came, and is coming.
As I have thought of this deep desire for hope, it has forced me to reckon with something. The line of good and evil runs right through my very self. In a more advent way of saying it, the cause for this profound need goes through me as much as it goes through you or my biggest enemy.
My own sin must be dealt with. My own falseness. My own, if we can, HOPELESSNESS. This is why we willingly wander into the wilderness of Advent. It is a season we can confront that which is in us and ask what it means that the Lord come and rend the Heavens in our lives. Turn it all upside down and be near to us. We must do this so that we can recognize much of what we personally see wrong in the world is a reflection of ourself.
We can face our own sins and our own demons and allow Jesus to heal us so that we might walk back into the world to celebrate.
To find hope, and carry hope.
Practically, this is how this very notion worked out in my own life this week. As part of our family observance of Advent, we have been lighting our wreath at home of an evening, we listen to a teaching from a wonderful podcast for kids called We Wonder, and then we listen to O Come O Come Emmanuel. In certain versions there is this wonderful verse at the end:
O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace
This year, though I’ve listened to this song year after year, that verse hit me. With all the division and chaos of 2020, what a line. And then, I thought of all of the “sad divisions” in my own life. Not just the politics and terrible race relations in this broken country. But all the little, sad ways I find myself being divided from brothers and sisters in Jesus, and my friends and family. And I pleaded in that moment, “Come Emmanuel, be near to me, and be my King of Peace for I ever in need of You.”
May this Advent be a season of reflection and repentance for us as we ready our hearts and create space for Jesus to come.