Two thousand years ago, St. Paul wrote to the Romans telling them that the coming of Jesus would be quick and, therefore, they needed to be ready. Of course, we know now that his assumption was incorrect. But we still have the promise that Jesus will return, and when he does, he will make
all things new.
The French Jesuit philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin, said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience.”
Teilhard de Chardin offers us a different and new perspective. I think St. Paul, in his time, was trying to do the same for the Romans – and invites us to this as well. The fact that we are followers of Christ and eternal beings should significantly affect how we live our lives. We are free from the expectations and self-centred interests of the world. We are being invited to see beyond the physical world
and keep that which never ends forever in our sight.
It is no coincidence that we read the Letter to the Romans on the First Sunday of Advent. Advent also invites us to see things from a new perspective. We do not have a God “watching us from a distance” – as Bette Midler
sings, but a God who becomes one like us. We do not have a God who is foreign to our experience, a God who creates and pulls back, but a God who chooses, in Jesus, to live as one of us.
Advent invites us to look at the God who comes in a child’s vulnerability, not with a stick in hand, but with outstretched
arms. In this Advent season, we are given a new image of God, who longs more than anything to be with each one of us no matter where we find ourselves or the cost to God.
Can you allow yourself, this Advent, to have your perspective of God changed? Can you meet God, vulnerable, defenceless, a child? Can you
meet a God who is close to you, where you are, who chooses to be in the chaos and mess of your life? That is what Advent invites you to discover: a God who loves and would do anything for the weak, struggling, imperfect and unfaithful. How does this feel to you today?
