Words of Advent: Break

Day seven of a daily meditation, a practice of free writing on words of Advent this season...

I'm singing at the top of my lungs this morning, on my way to work.  Singing about being still in the roar of the storm, about anchoring my hope in the one who is King over the flood.  The only breaking I'm thinking about at this point is my own.  

But later in the morning, I'm thinking beyond my breaking point, to that moment in waiting when the salvation of God breaks through darkness, hopelessness, despair.  And it just so happens that this moment comes, according to a writer of the Psalms, just at the break of dawn.  

At the breaking point, God's help comes.

In the advent of a new day, hope breaks through.

That's how Christ came to us, breaking through a long history of human failure, captivity, unfaithfulness, oppression, and over three hundred prophecies yet to be fulfilled.  It's how he comes to us now.

God, as a baby, broke through the body of a young woman, his birth setting in motion the dawning of a new day.  The day of salvation.

At the birth of Christ, light breaks through darkness; perfect love breaks in pieces chains of fear; hope breaks open and spills across the earth; the earth breaks forth in song. 

And it seems no coincidence that this reference to the timing of God's help occurs in the same Psalm that speaks of stillness.  The same one that I belted out in song this morning, just before the break of dawn.

Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth!

~ Psalm 46:10