“The voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way . .. “ Mark 1: 3
In this season of Advent we remember that the wilderness was the place that John called the people of God to come out to. He asked them to come away and prepare their hearts for the new thing that God was about to do. And the people came out to the desert, away from the temple and the city, to learn from John more about this new way of being.
Where John speaks from is as important as his words, for as a Sierra Club calendar states, ‘Nowhere else on earth is geologic time so exposed as in a desert.” Nowhere else is God’s time so exposed in our lives as in desert experiences. In those moments of loss and grief we are open to God’s timescale. In desert moments we know that we are not in control and that we must trust God in the midst of the chaos.
December for many people is a desert month. Grief comes calling in loud and quiet ways. I’ve spent much of this month helping my mom to move from her home of 60 years into an apartment. Last week we went through the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations and ornaments. As we unwrapped each item from its newspaper protection, we would remember the stories that came with them. And then we packed it all back up to give away. She could only keep a few items. I took a carload to Goodwill, dishes and ornaments, a ceramic creche and carolers.
Amid the carols and colors of Christmas we must ask ourselves, how can we give voice to the pain, the desert time some people are feeling? How do we give voice to the Advent Blues?
I always appreciated it when we had an Advent Blues service at church. Blues music is comfortable with dissonance. It improvises in the midst of dissonance. Blues music holds on to the dissonance longer than we are comfortable, but it does eventually find resolution. Chaos finally moves to grace.
And so too it is in our lives. As Rosalind Brown writes, “If we can be quiet in our hearts long enough, we will discover that God still carves out highways and turns the wilderness into a place of wonder, life and beauty, even though it is nothing as we expected.”
Grace shall flow in the deserts of our lives, in God’s time. May we find ways to sing our songs of hope even in the midst of the deserts and the dissonance. I do believe the voice continues to sing out in the wilderness. As the old gospel song declares, “God will make a way when there seems to be no way.” May you hear God’s voice in this season.
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