Friday, December 7, 2012

Words of Advent: Waiting

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Waiting, a word heavily weighted in time.  

Were a lifetime of waiting quantified, rolled out on a sheet of butcher paper, the length, I'm sure, might stretch dozens of fields beyond my vision, an art project begun, yet never finished.  Viewed from this angle, waiting strains the eyes and crushes the spirit.  

But an endless expanse of waiting eventually ends at some point, and in the journey along the way, bits of treasure are gathered up and the paper is filled with sketches, words, paint strokes, glitter, remnants of flower and earth attached with glue. And then and only then, waiting ceases to be an endless roll of blank paper, but a work in progress.  Poetry and song and love story in the making.  

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When we see that the yawning stretch of time is actually born of moment upon moment upon moment.  Waiting is a chain of time and story linked together by moments.

And when the fullness of time comes, the wait is satisfied.    

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law..."

We wait, this Advent, for a gift already birthed; we wait for the continuous birth of this gift in our lives and hearts and world; and we wait, with eyes of faith, for consummation. 

But however long until the fullness of time, we wait, with hope, in moments.




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


2 comments:

  1. How I delighted in this metaphor -- butcher paper rolled out over time and space. And then the beauty when we can look back and see, this work in progress, this artist's work being done over time...through the fullness of time satisfied and yet, here we wait for it...again..

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    1. I don't know about you, but God speaks to me so often in metaphors. Must be a writer thing :-) And yes, how you said it so well - "through the fullness of time satisfied and yet, here we wait for it...again." It's a mystery, for sure.

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