Advent III

Sadly I finished a great book this week. To read a good book makes me happy. To finish a good book makes me sad. To finish good book is to sever ties with a story, a character, and an author who have been beside for for the hours, days, weeks, or months I've been engaged in reading. For the past few months I've been reading a collection of sermons written by Frederick Buechner. His writes about Christian spirituality with a solid conviction coupled with a candid sense of honesty that allows me to relate in my own ignorance and confusion. He has been a gentle, consistent and gracious friend through a time I have felt more alone than I often knew how to respond to. I'd love to quote much of writing, but for the purpose of this post and the theme of Advent I'll quote the following from a sermon called "Waiting"

I think we are waiting. This is what is at the heart of it. Even when we don't know that we are waiting, I think we are waiting. Even when we can't find the words for what we are waiting for, I think we are waiting. An ancient advent prayer supplies us with the words. "Give us grace," it says, "that we may cast off the works of darkness and put upon the armor of light." We who live much of the time in the darkness are waiting not just at Advent, but at all times for the advent of light, of that ultimate light that is redemptive and terrifying at the same time. It is redemptive because it puts an end to the darkness, and that is also why it is terrifying, because for so long, for all our lives, the darkness has become home, and because to leave home is always cause for terror.
So to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ's stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ's healing and hope because unless we bring it, it may never be brought at all.
And he adds the following prayer:
God grant that we may each of us cast off our own works of darkness, whatever they are, however we can, and put upon ourselves the armor of something at least a little like the light as we wait for the truth of Christ to come finally and fully true at last.

And I say, Amen.