Advent means arrival. It is coming. It is coming. Whether we are prepared or not the baby will arrive and everything for the moment will be turned upside down. Bringing trees into the house. Trees! Finding in dusty boxes stored away our peculiar treasures. A tiny star made out of dough placed on our tree for how many years? One of our daughter’s first gifts. And now in her fifties she still remembers. We unearthed the poor Nativity Mary with a hole in her back—our son could not resist playing Superman with her and saying over and over: “Shazam!!” We found the crocheted little wreaths my mother made long ago. And ornaments from my wife’s mother—she used year after year. We could go on.
We decorate the tree and string lights on the mantle. Like the birth of that other baby our house is turned upside down. Why? The kids are coming. The grand children are coming and we will break loose from the ravages of this virus and terrible conditions in our world and stand just inside this cracked door and once again feel a touch of wonder we thought was lost.
Yes—the kids and grands will arrive but there is another arrival. “Watch!” the old book says because we never really know when a guest we did not expect and did expect will come in and bring good tidings of great joy to all people. All. Not just Democrats or Republicans or those strange nones or immigrants without a place to sleep. So we keep bumping into this word: All. We are all included. Prisoners. These slipping away into the mystery. Children with starlight in their eyes. And those that come to the food pantry. Not to forget all those on drugs or alcohol or some other addiction. The grievers and the joyous.
We all come hopefully watching and waiting. Not missing those stories of angels’ wings and a sixteen year old girl scared and pregnant. And hopefully sitting down at a table covered in food lovingly prepared for your homecoming.
And that is what I am thinking about this beginning of Advent. And going way back and remembering those first Christmases and some memories over eighty years old. Around that table there will be vacant spots and we will remember those not here anymore.
So we crack the door and peer in. And hopefully watch and wait which may be the hardest thing for we Americans.
Inside we find home: “the place that when you come there they have to let you in”. I hope you will walk with me through this four week journey. Searching almost one and all for that place called home.
And I remember those wonderful words of G.K. Chesterton:
“To an open house in the evening
Home shall all (sic) come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all…are at home.”
Won’t you join me as we stand on the porch and walk inside and find Peace and great joy which can come to us all.
See you next week. As we crack the door just a little more.
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