Expectancy, Hopefulness, Joy!

The Coming

God held in his hand a small globe.

"Look!" he said.  The Son looked.

Far off, as through water he saw a parched land

of fierce colour. The light burned there;

crusted buildings cast their shadows; a bright serpent,
a river, uncoiled itself, radiant with slime.
On a bare hill, a bare tree saddened the sky.
Many people held out their thin arms to it,
as though waiting for a vanished April to return
to its crossed boughs.
The Son watched them.
"LET ME GO THERE", he said.    R.S. Thomas.

This poem by the Anglican clergyman, R.S. Thomas, who died recently, has a very powerful message for us as we open the gate to Advent.  The weeks leading up to Christmas are wonderful aren't they?  Each year we experience the excitement, the hope the expectancy that lift us out of the dark days and light our lives with that tingling of the thumbs that means we are coming to life!  All around us we hear the sounds of life - the tinkling bells, the running feet of children racing to the shops for brightly-wrapped presents, the sound of carols sung outside in the crisp air of Winter days -  the monotonous ping of the tills registering another sale, the noise of laughter and excited voices drowning out the myriad voices of the beggars who throng our streets at this time. It is almost Christmas - the beautifully lighted window displays tell us so, and in odd corners and in large shop windows the simple, age-old Crib re-iterates the message.  But what message is that today?  So many regard Christmas as just a holiday, and Advent as a time of extra work which is often stressful.  But what is it for you? As Christians, we have to think about that very carefully.

Frances Taylor thought of Advent as a special time when, to quote the SMG Way of Life, she asks us "to allow the mystery of the Incarnation to penetrate our whole being, until Christ becomes our all in all." So for her as for R.S. Thomas, it was a time for reflection for quiet prayer.  Look at the poem again and try to imagine the scene.  Christ sees the darkness, the hopelessness, the longing for an escape as he contemplates the unredeemed world. His response was wrung from him: "Let me go there!" he begs his Father.  To give us hope, to give us freedom, to give us life, to give us Christmas.  The Incarnation, or the coming of Christ to share our pain and darkness as well as our joy and hope, is for Frances Taylor the ultimate sign of the worth of human beings.  If Christ thought it of value to become human, then, in her eyes all human beings were worthy of dignity and of love. All without exception.  She understood that the Incarnation happened only once historically, but in love it goes on through time and space, so that each Christmas brings Christ anew to our darkened world, reaching out his hands to heal, to reconcile, to lift us out of our own particular darknesses  in order to experience the joy of those shepherds and kings that first Christmas-tide.. And we?  Well there is no contest.  Our response in these cash-strapped days of recession, has  to be that of men and women of hope.  We are invited to help those less fortunate than ourselves: to pray for the homeless, the housebound, the lonely, the poor. 

It is now our turn, we cannot just look on Christmas as a big party time and nothing more - to do that, would be to imitate those harassed innkeepers in Bethlehem on that first Christmas night.  They ignored Jesus; they had no room for him.  The demands of the census and the subsequent influx of visitors proved too much for them.  To house a baby, a young mother and a worried father was out of the question.  Frances Taylor told us that the saints revealed that Jesus himself loves to have his infany honoured on earth, and he blesses those who do it.  I told you there was no contest!!  Enjoy Advent.