There’s so much I haven’t done. So many ways I’m not ready, never ready for Christmas. This year, in particular, the violence in the world has made the promise of the Prince of Peace so much more significant, the need for peace, for shalom, restoration, wholeness, all these things I long for, as if they could be knitted up in my body, as if the rent cloth could be resown. I know I’m not alone in this longing for the world to be healed. Advent is full of so much longing. Last week, we read Zephaniah during the worship service, and I have come back to these lines so many times:
“The Lord will rejoice over you with gladness, and will renew you with love.”
There’s an Advent expectancy inside those words, and the so much that isn’t or hasn’t or won’t be done are not so important. In the meantime, while the mystery inside the womb of God continues to be mysterious, we are praying and learning, here at home, to be peacemakers, with every breath, breathing peace, wanting to be healers in every word and action, alive with the hope that God really means what God says, and if God renews us with love, this moment is pregnant with it, ready to be born.

The sun is rising over the ocean in the far south this morning, the long rays reach into the house, opening the day. Tomorrow the O Antiphons start–but I love the one: O Come Thou DaySpring. May it be so.