(12/5 Update - Scholar and blogger Scot McKnight has re-posted this article on his blog, and it's a great chance to participate in the conversation!)
A Counter-Cultural Quiet in Advent
Adam McHugh
For some people, the Advent season on the church calendar is one of the most anticipated times of the year. For some, there is no other time in which their love of God is stronger, there is no other time in which they are more aware of God's mercy in their lives and in the world, there is no other time in which their hearts go out to others with such affection, and there is no other time in which their joy is more profound.
I am not one of those people.
Read the rest of this article at Patheos by clicking here
There's a verse of "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" that I think about a lot this time of year:
ReplyDeleteYet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.
"Hush the noise, ye men of strife / and hear the angels sing."
I grew up in an Evangelical tradition that didn't have much to do with liturgy or church calendar. And I HATED Christmas, until last year when I discovered Advent. Can we please do away with all of this "Christmas" nonsense and just celebrate Advent? Can we please listen to the angels sing?
That is lovely.
ReplyDeleteWhile we're quoting poetry/songs... :D
This poem (while technically about nature, not Advent or Christmas) came to my mind when I was reading this article and thinking about Advent in general:
God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
I've never really paid attention to that line in that hymn. I love it!
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