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- Even in the tension of our belief and unbelief, our watching is an act of faith, declaring that God is stronger than our doubts, our fears, and our questions Even if we begin in weakness, God will transform our watching into strength as Paul writes: “whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”
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- During Advent, the Lord watches as well, with care and love abounding, not from an immeasurable distance, but a closeness that defines intimacy. The Lord watches not to note failings and our accumulation of sin, but as a way of knowing us and declaring us bound to one another in faith and life.
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- In our watching we may find ourselves turning to prayer as it emerges from the expectation that dwells deep and anchors us in faith. As we talk to God, let us embrace the richness of how we express ourselves: our sighing, our crying out, our whispers, even our laughter and our silences.
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- We begin Advent with the brutal honesty of our longing, echoed in Psalm 119:81-82. Already but not yet, the incarnation is both a moment in history and our present immediacy. The mystics of old had to escape into wild and lonely places to seek Christ, yet we seek him amid life and our living of it.
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- Evening gives way to morning; from the very beginning of creation, the days were marked by this transition. Where is the first place Christ will meet you and in what need of your soul will the Lord nourish and nurture you?
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- Our watching can find expression by inviting us to be lost to time, in prayer, thought and reflection, transforming the ordinary time of our going out and coming in and all that is between, and declaring it holy. Consider the gift given to us by the Christians Celts who believed that in an ordinary moment God is present; every act of our day becomes an act of worship.
Advent is a time of watching.
