From the rector: Slow down this Advent

By the Rev. Benjamin Wells Maas

Father Ben during a baptism on Nov. 23.

I have heard from others senior to me that time moves more quickly the older you are. I can certainly attest to this as my youngest is a couple of weeks from knowing where she will go to college and entering her last semester of high school.

I blinked and my son and daughter are grown adults. I blinked again and summer gave way to signs of winter. SLOW DOWN!!!

This is a far cry from my childhood days where the school year had a way of gumming up the hour hand on every white and black wall clock. By October, time was like walking through wet concrete. The anticipation of Halloween, the march to Thanksgiving break, and finally Christmas, felt almost unbearable.

From my recollection of that time, Advent, the lighting of candles, felt more like the mile markers and volunteers waving signs and ringing cow bells on the Gobble, Gobble, Run or Wobble course assuring me I was getting closer, I was almost there, the finish line is in sight, I was going to make it!

Now, Advent and its symbols feel a bit more like the opposite, speed bumps installed to slow me down and remind me I am not on the highway or interstate. Don’t be in such a hurry, there are things to notice, children at play!

Whether we are joyfully celebrating our way through the holidays, frantically running in a hundred directions, or putting our head down and avoidantly rushing to the other side of it, we need those speed bumps lest we risk missing Advent’s invitation.

Advent shouts at us, “Look for God, look for God! Christ is coming, always coming, always doing something new. Stop, look, expect God, trust God, long for a God beyond the already.”

The gratitude of Thanksgiving and the miracle of that first Christmas are the assurance, the substance of a God who is good and bounding in love for us, but it isn’t the end of the story, it isn’t the end of our journey. And we may have to put down some of what has been, what is, in order to receive, to walk toward what could be, toward God’s dream for healing and reconciliation, for a more just and loving world.

So look up, look forward, look beyond. Expect God not locked in stories or in Christmases past, but beyond experiences, beyond expectations, beyond all imagination and horizons. Isn’t that what we celebrate in a God who bent low and came to us in the form of a vulnerable infant child?

Peace,

Ben+

The Rev. Benjamin Wells Maas is the rector of Saint James’ Episcopal Church and the chaplain of Saint James’ Episcopal School. Contact him at rector@saintjameswarrenton.org.