Patience

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
         — James 5.7

The great scandal of incarnation is than in choosing to live in us, God assents to our vulnerability, suffering and finitude. God does not come in a palace, powerful and safe, but in a shoddy stable, in a lowly manger, poor and at risk. God willingly, lovingly lives in all that is not well in us. God lives in our hurt and our failure. Our pain and weakness, our anger and bewilderment, our lack of faith, this is the manger where Christ comes. God takes up a dwelling in our lives with great love, with tender delight and unflappable patience.

In entering into the heart of all that is, God enters as well all that is not yet. God is in all that is not right, not just, not healed, not yet finished. Mary sings of the transformation of our society, when the hungry are fed. Isaiah sees the desert blossom and all the exiles return. This has not happened yet. But God comes already anyway, and waits with us as grace unfolds among and within us.

In Advent we enter into God's great patience. We enter into the healing of the world and we wait with God, who waits with us. We enter into the pain and the not knowing, the loneliness and the despair, and because God is there, we find hope and tenderness. We trust that what we await will surely come, and that even in our waiting God is already present.

Be patient and wait. Know that God is waiting with us with patience as well, and with great love and unimaginable power.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
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