Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-with-Us Then, Here, and Now

by Scott Erickson

Feel what you need to feel through these pages. Hold what you need to hold. View the imagery, stories, and insight as guideposts along the journey. Embrace the tension of what you know and don’t know. Trust that all around this seemingly ordinary world the image of grace remains. Stay open to the possibility of what could be, and you will never be the same.

You’re supposed to feel the wait—the anticipated arrival of something you want so badly—and by feeling the wait deeply, you’ll be even more satisfied by the celebration of the arrival on Christmas Day. At least that’s the hope.

Justin McRoberts, who has a delightful way of framing our frustration with prayer by stating that we can often confuse the mechanics of prayer with the essence of prayer. We can get all caught up with our language and body positioning and forget that these are just the invented structures that help us connect to what prayer is really about—abiding in the love of God.

Nostalgia is the familiar feeling rooted in a patterned experience that gives comfort in the face of present mystery. It’s probably the largest influencer of church services today. It’s easy to trade nostalgia for essence. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with the familiarity found in nostalgia. Familiarity is a helpful tool. But familiarity kills wonder.

Wonder is an interesting phenomenon, because it’s that moment when all of our narratives and stories about life disappear in the rapturous experience of actually being here.

Wonder is most accessible in new situations, because we don’t have a narrative about what’s happening.

A great question when it comes to art is, “What does this mean?” An even better question is, “What is this pulling out of me?” Art has that glorious excavating quality, so don’t miss out.

All great stories come at a cost, and the cost of revelation is that it’s going to ask something of us. In any divine annunciation, you receive revelation as a gift, yet at the same time you receive notice that all that you had planned is ending. It’s all over. Everything will change—most of all you.

But it seems that revelation doesn’t transform the places you want to transform; it transforms all the things you dreamed and planned for your best-case scenario.

But then again, she who is willing to accept the cost of revelation finds herself in the deepest of stories. Stories that are so mysterious, divine, and human that we still tell them today.

May you receive the light of divine annunciation in the flames of your best-laid plans.

the peculiar paradox of parenting is forming the parts you know and the parts you don’t know.

this mysterious aspect of parenting, which is to pay attention to how they have uniquely come into the world and help foster their predisposition to its fullest fruition in greater society.

Richard Rohr sums up his spiritual practices like this: “The physical world is the doorway to the spiritual world,”1 and the spiritual world is much, much larger than this one. His tradition believes there is a much larger reality, a reality hidden from our senses, a reality where God is easily seen and known, and this larger reality is only accessible through this limited physical one.

Meister Eckhart quote at you: “If the soul could have known God without the world, the world would never have been created,”

Who we are is deeper than where we find ourselves in this moment. And Jesus illuminates that deeper identity.

Another way to say it is there is a Giver of this life. And then the Giver of this life joins that life, and His life brings light to all life. Don’t get lost in all the metaphor! Put simply, the function of light is to help us see more clearly. Jesus’ life helps us see our own lives more clearly.

But what gives me hope in this Advent season is the reminder that everything can be taken away except that hidden part of me. Whether I lose my savings, my house, my title, or my very livelihood, what is un-takeable is the part of me that Jesus illuminates. The deeper self that was woven into this world but is anchored in a much larger world. In the gift of my life is a doorway to a much larger reality. And Jesus is the Light that shows me the way. May you rest in the peace that the darkness can never extinguish the light that has been given you.

Whether you’re a mother or not, may you learn from the courage of Eve and Mary, who found themselves in complicated first-time situations. And may you bestow on your very own first-time situations the same grace, kindness, and honor we give to them.

The ancient psalmist alludes to an interior process of knitting—a delicate intertwining of individual strands over and over again until eventually an elaborate and beautiful tapestry comes to fruition.

What does it say about a God . . . who’s willing to be this vulnerable with us? who’s willing to come into this world through the statistical risk of childbearing? who’s willing to be attached by a placenta for nourishment and life to Its own creation? who’s willing to wait and grow in the human womb? who’s willing to be fearfully and wonderfully made, just like we are?

What it says about a God who’s willing to be this vulnerable is that God is willing to open Itself up to deeply connect with us. The real question is, are we willing to do the same?

Truth is perhaps most simply defined as “the actual state of the matter; seeing things for the way they are,”

Truth is found when we can lay aside our own preferences and vantages and see everything for the way it is.

It’s interesting that those who spent time with Jesus consistently described Him as being “full of truth.” Having a clear perspective. Seeing the real.

Grace is theologically defined as “the freely given unmerited fav...

Shame believes one lacks what it takes to be loved and must endeavor to earn that back. It’s the burden of perfection morally, spiritually, humanly, and it inevitably destroys our souls because there is no fulfillment of enough. It’s just an endless jog on the janky treadmill of striving.

To see Jesus as full of grace means there wasn’t any perfection checklist that was met to deserve His presence. His arrival stands against the idea that if you do it right, you get access to His presence. His presence was freely given. He never withheld it. Grace is presence not withheld.

A religion based on trying to earn love inevitably fails, because works can never truly heal the fear of being left alone because of your real. At some point, you just want to be loved for your real—the actual state of the matter of you.

It’s honest about the family Jesus is birthing into, the real human family, and it’s refreshingly relatable to us today.

We are a culmination of holy moments and juicy moments too (you know what you know), and it is this paradox of interior genealogy that we carry into the season of Advent, wondering if Christ could come into our complicated midst as well.

Grace and truth is the invitation to be seen, and in that seeing to receive the gift of presence not withheld. It is this loving presence given to who we are right now that will truly heal us. It releases us from the janky treadmill of religious striving and invites us to a long walk on the beach as ones who love each other.

Love has always been about forgiveness—For Given-Ness—presence not withheld in the midst of seeing the real. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.”1

May grace and truth be not only realities you understand but realities you give to others.

“Let it be to me according to your word.” LUKE 1:38 ESV

It’s not written in the gospel texts, but it’s plausible to suggest there was a period in Mary’s journey when she too went through this same uneasy trimester. I can imagine the moment it hit, ending the spiritual high of angelic announcement and welcoming her into the uneasy, queasy feeling of actually having to go through the physical details of this divine calling. That’s the rub of all divine proclamations, isn’t it? The announcement that you are going to grow.

What is the conversation I can have only by being in this situation? What parts of my life have I been able to uncover only by finding myself here? What unexpected place might God want to meet me in during this uneasy time I’m experiencing?

May the unease of your stretching and expanding be the promise of divine love growing in you a new life of unforeseen possibility.

He said that God wanted me to know He saw where I was at and knew it was a completely painful place to be, and God also wanted me to know I had been obedient in doing all the work of repairing past relationships, even though I wasn’t going to work there moving forward.

I thought what I needed to hear was the next steps for provision. What I really needed to hear was that I had been seen and known by Providence the whole time.

For John, God’s plan had moved from lamb to man, from abstract to physical, from cosmic to personal. And that is the invitation for us this Advent too.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega . . . who is, and who was, and who is to come,”5 which seems to cover pretty much all the things. It’s the “who was” part that catches my attention because it means that Who has been around for everything up until now. Who has been paying attention. Who comes into this universe (rays), this time (clock), and this world (earth) as the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. But Who also comes to us personally, today, as the answer to our deepest question: Who cares?

They remain safe in big abstract ideas because it’s harder to decipher divine sovereignty in the bills, breakdowns, breakups, tumors, layoffs, and food stamps of an everyday life. But it’s exactly in those details that God’s all-powerfulness is to be found. I think wonder is to be found when we move from obsessively figuring out cosmic plans to observing intentionality in the details of where we actually are.

What is the only honest conversation I could have by being in this circumstance?

I don’t know how sovereignty works, but I do know that God is very, very detailed with our lives. And when we awaken to that intentionality, it will fill us with wonder. May you find the Almighty waiting in the conversation you can have only by being in your current situation.

To participate in this world, with the seen and unseen, is to breathe in and out the air that gives life to our bodies, and with that breathing to become aware of the Spirit who gives life to that deep hidden side of us as well.

What does it say about a God who is willing to be this present with us? A God who is everywhere at once, a God whom the world cannot contain, yet who has been present with humanity in a box (ark of the covenant), in a body (skull and heart), in a blessing (cup and cross), and in our very breath. “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

To pay attention to the rhythm of ruach already inside us . . . and to realize that the Divine with us is not in a building we must journey to, but is in the animating breath of what makes us alive.

May you awaken to the inseparable love of God by the very breathing that you are not in charge of.