He felt that our suffering offers us entry into the true Advent, our personal journey toward union with God. His own life, and great sufferings,
illustrated the true Advent he preached and wrote about.
These meditations were smuggled out of
There is
perhaps nothing we modern people need more than to be genuinely shaken up.
Where life is firm we need to sense its firmness; and where it is unstable and
uncertain and has no basis, we need to know this, too, and endure it.
We may ask
why God sends whirlwinds over the earth, why the chaos where all appears
hopeless and dark, and why there seems to be no end to human suffering. Perhaps
it is because we have been living on earth in an utterly false and counterfeit
security. and now God strikes the earth till it resounds, now he shakes and
shatters: not to pound us with fear, but to teach us one thing – the spirit’s
innermost longing.
Many of the
things that are happening today would never have happened if we had been living
in that longing, that disquiet of heart which comes when we are faced with God,
and when we look clearly at things as they really are. If we had done this, God
would have withheld his hand from many of the things that now shake and crush
our lives. We would have come to terms with and judged the limits of our own
competence.
But we have
lived in a false confidence, in a delusional security; in our spiritual
insanity we really believe we can bring the stars down from heaven and kindle
flames of eternity in the world. We believe that with our own forces we can
avert the dangers and banish night, switch off and halt the internal quaking of
the universe. We believe we can harness everything and fit it into an ultimate
scheme that will last.
Here is the
message of Advent: faced with him who is the Last, the world will begin to
shake. Only when we do not cling to false securities will our eyes be able to
see this Last One and get to the bottom of things. Only then will we have the
strength to overcome the terrors into which God has let the world sink. God
uses these terrors to awaken us from sleep, as Paul says, and to show us that
it is time to repent, time to change things. It is time to say, “all right, it
was night; but let that be over now and let us get ready for the day.” We must
do this with a decision that comes out of the very horrors we experience.
Because of this our decision will be unshakable even in uncertainty.
If we want
Advent to transform us – our homes and hearts, and even nations – then the
great question for us is whether we will come out of the convulsions of our
time with this determination: Yes, arise! It is time to awaken from sleep. a
waking up must begin somewhere. It is time to put things back where God
intended them. It is time for each of us to go to work – certain that the Lord
will come – to set our life in God’s order wherever we can. Where God’s word is
heard, he will not cheat us of the truth; where our life rebels he will
reprimand it.
We need
people who are moved by the horrific calamities and emerge from them with the
knowledge that those who look to the Lord will be preserved by him, even if
they are hounded from the earth.
Being
shocked, however, out of our pathetic complacency is only part of Advent. There
is much more that belongs to it. Advent is blessed with God’s promises, which
constitute the hidden happiness of this time. These promises kindle the light
in our hearts. Being shattered, being awakened – these are necessary for
Advent. In the bitterness of awakening, in the helplessness of “coming to,” in
the wretchedness of realizing our limitations, the golden threads that pass
between heaven and earth reach us. These threads give the world a taste of the abundance
it can have.
We must not
shy away from Advent thoughts of this kind. We must let our inner eye see and
our hearts range far. Then we will encounter both the seriousness of Advent and
its blessings in a different way. We will, if we would but listen, hear the
message calling out to us to cheer us, to console us, and to uplift us.