The Advent Pilgrimage - 2nd Week

Luke 3: 1-6

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’

Ever wonder how long John was in the desert? A few months? A year or two? For a long time I never even thought about this. Every year during Advent, the wild, passionate and totally committed John would suddenly arrive on the scene, a voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”  It wasn’t until I began to utterly appreciate the astounding beauty of the spiritual desert that I began to ponder on what John may have gone through in the desert before he heard the voice of God speak to him. 

Scripture doesn’t really say how long he was in the desert but Luke 1:80 says this: 

“And the child kept growing and becoming strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he was revealed to Israel.” Some authorities believe that John went out into the wilderness as a boy. So, what was he doing all that time besides going locust hunting, sewing together animal skins and discovering the best places to find wild honey?

Probably waiting.

In the last reflection I spoke about how waiting is a holy and beautiful prayer but I was aware that what I said wasn’t enough. It’s a good thing there are four Sundays in Advent because waiting is a big topic and simply recognizing the spiritual value and validity of waiting won’t get us through some of those long periods of waiting in our lives.  Waiting can be grindingly boring or it can be full of aching grief. At times it can be filled day after day with frustration, anxiety, stress or a sense that if you have to endure something for another moment you will scream. At other times, life just takes over and we get busy with all the things we are normally busy with until we suddenly realize it has been a very long time since we thought much about the Lord or about our spiritual health and we become conscious of the fact that we have lost touch with who we are and who he is. Then we begin to wait ourselves back to him. Waiting has as many tones, shapes and nuances as there are people who are in waiting. But what happens during waiting? What happens to us?

Anne (not her real name) had become pregnant, which was a longstanding desire of hers. Then suffered an early miscarriage. This was heartbreaking for her but was also a time of great grace. Some time after that miscarriage, Anne wrote to me: 

"I had a feeling that I was pregnant again. This was not planned but what I felt about the possibility was: peace. If I wasn't pregnant, I felt peace about that too. I was surprised in some ways to feel this way. Most women who have miscarried find they cannot escape the heavy fear of miscarriage in subsequent pregnancies. But I felt like I had so much trust, because I knew that Christ would come to me no matter what. Through the spiritual experience of my last pregnancy and miscarriage, I was led to patience. I didn't feel this urgent need to know if I was pregnant and I didn't feel this urgent need to make it through the first trimester if I was."

Anne was given a gift, one that all of us can receive little by little through our times of waiting on the Lord. She called it patience and patience is definitely part of it. I call it detachment.

Before I go further I need to make something particularly clear. Anne received a gift from God. She received grace and this gift was not dependent on her goodness or on her spiritual acuity. She definitely is a spiritually committed and aware woman and this gave her the ability to recognize the gift and to recognize the pilgrimage opened to her.  However, she was not given a ‘magic key’ that would automatically make all her future times of waiting, whether for a child or anything else, easy and peaceful. What she did receive was a glimpse of what God was shaping within her and had in store for her if she continued to pay attention to her spiritual prayer of waiting.

The word ‘detachment’ can sound cold and distant, as if you don’t care and emotions can’t touch you. This is not what God’s gift of detachment gives us. Anne certainly did care about whether there was a baby forming in her womb and experienced joy over the prospect. She was not given the grace to be “I don’t care” detached; she was given the grace to be “My God does everything perfectly and carries me and all I hold dear in the palm of his hand” detached. We all long to have this kind of detachment: a deep and unmovable trust that whatever happens, the Lord is Good, Good, Good. It is an unshifting knowledge that no matter what our outer desires are, the only thing we really want is for him to be the creator and lover of our lives.

Our heads know we should be that trusting but we are human and trust does not come without effort. When the world and the people around us are so capable of letting us down so easily, frequently and painfully, it's no wonder we struggle to find the ability to trust the Lord. He doesn’t chastise us for our lack of trust; he simply sets about the task of forming that trust within us and that formation is the pilgrimage called ‘waiting’.

Waiting eventually strips us. It strips us of all the devices we use to try to make things happen. Waiting is the only thing that will utterly convince us of our own poverty because once God holds something back there is nothing on earth or in the universe that can release it.  Nothing can happen, nothing can become alive, nothing can grow, nothing can come to a realization, nothing can be made whole and nothing can become pliable, open and willing until God says, “Now.” Through waiting, we come to realize how small we are – and conversely, how great he is. And don’t try the old trick of saying to God, “O.K. I’m small and you’re great. Now please give me what I desire.” He is the potter and you are the clay, and he knows exactly where you are in the process of formation.  He reads your heart, not your lips.

Let’s get back to John.  Before he came to know who he was - “A Voice Crying Out In The Wilderness” - and before he could move out of the desert in certainty and power, he waited – for years. He waited, listened and waited some more. He learned the depth of power of the God who could move the wind and shift the sand. He listened to a Voice that sounded like locusts and discovered less and less need to feed on his own inner voices and his own words. He drank of the Spirit who was like honey to his parched soul and knew that movement and direction was no longer his to decide. He waited and watched a seemingly unchanging and empty horizon until he lost his own desires and became filled with God’s desires. He pondered twisted roots and the miracle of a blade of grass in a waterless land and grew into the knowledge that the Messiah had come. John learned to wait. He learned to listen. He learned to see. He learned in ways he never could have learned on his own. And then, through the distant and lonely cries of a wild animal in the night, God whispered to his soul, “It is time. Go.”  Then John rose up with fire in his soul and before he even came to God’s people, he was compelled to cry out to the desert, to the locusts and wild animals, to the howling wind and the night stars, “Prepare the Way for the Lord! Make his path straight. Build a highway for our God!” He could not contain the fullness of all that he had been waiting for. He had to shout it out even when there was no human to hear.

Whatever God has in store for you, whether it’s filling your valleys, straightening your paths or smoothing the roughness, the Pilgrimage of Waiting is breathtaking. God will take your breath away – and then fill you with his own.

Worth its wait in gold.