Meditations During Advent: Advent Yearning

A friend in seminary taught me to needlepoint. There were lots of lectures, it was something to do with my hands. 

She was famous for intricate Christmas stockings. She guided me to a simpler project – a creche. It wasn’t quite as simple as I’d hoped, and it turns out I am slow stitcher. It took three years to complete. Consequently, I valued the creche highly, as a family heirloom, and displayed it on the mantel, far from the maddening crowds of children and dogs. But one Christmas a dozen years ago the needlepoint creche was on the floor (in a plastic bag) while we decorated the tree…

My daughter caught the dog behind a chair with the Baby Jesus—he growled about giving it back. We saved what could be saved. There are eleven pieces to the creche—the dog had his choice. Somehow, he chose the main event. 
This is what many of us are doing in church – trying to get a hold of Jesus. In the mid-week Eucharist, we pray that we might become what we receive. The Eucharist is our yearning for God.  

Here at Advent with ponder something different--the incarnation is God’s yearning for us.

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1937 the Christ Child visited St. Faustina. She writes of her vision: 

When I arrived at Midnight Mass, from the very beginning I steeped myself in deep recollection, during which time I saw the stable of Bethlehem filled with great radiance. The Mother of God, all lost in the deepest of love, was wrapping Jesus in swaddling clothes, but Saint Joseph was still asleep. Only after the Mother of God put Jesus in the manger did the light of God awaken Joseph, who also prayed. But after a while, I was left alone with the Infant Jesus who stretched out those little hands to me, and I understood that I was to take him in my arms. Jesus pressed his head against my heart and gave me to know, by his profound gaze, how good he found it to be next to my heart.

Advent readies us for the great mystery that our yearning for God is met with God’s yearning for us.  What an affair of love.  

- The Rev. Judith Whelchel