The Long Quiet: Advent 2024

 

I hadn't intended to write Advent posts this year.  I was going to participate in Advent privately by reading and studying but not create.  Yet when I sat down tonight to begin a different post, the title presented itself and I felt my spirit hush and wait.  

I'm not often quiet like this in the evening.  My mind is full of what I've done that day, what I'm going to do tomorrow, what I hope to do before sleep overtakes me or worrying that it won't overtake me and I'll come to tomorrow weary and worn.

This morning, I sat here with my coffee and stared out the window at the lovely sunny day.  A breeze stirred the bells on the front porch and as they began to ring, I felt something in me unwind and relax, felt my soul stretch as it hasn't in many months. Time stopped.  There was nothing but the lovely day and the ringing bells and that stillness within my own soul.  I craved it, needed it.  It was just a short moment of time, perhaps only two or three minutes and certainly no more than five. It ended.  But it lingered within me.  I thought about it all day long.  And each time I remembered that moment I felt that stillness within all over again.  I became re-centered and aware of a deeper longing.  

It was a spiritual longing to go inward and find Christ in me once more.

Tonight, I felt the hush that falls only rarely these days, and I waited.  Because whatever is coming, I want to experience it fully as it unfolds.  And if I hurry on to the next thing, I will miss it all.

We live in a noisy world, face paced and always distracting.  We are before screens far too long each day: a tv, a computer, a phone.  My to do list echoes through my brain with all the unticked items staring down at me.  I watch the clock, wondering how much longer I can work, how much longer do I even want to work.  

The world is literally with us everywhere we go.  There is too much that captures my attention.  And the more I see and hear of this world beyond us, the more I find my soul crowded in such a way that there is no place for Christ.  It shouldn't be so.    

I look at my Bible.  I see the unwashed dish, the dust on the furniture.  I sit in church and vow that this week, this week, I shall be more aware of the need for that contemplative time with God, but I quickly forget and allow my attention to wander and get caught up by the week ahead.  By the time service is over, I am weary from dragging my attention back to the sermon.  I feel I am struggling hard and losing all of the time.

This season I want to seek out the quiet moments, like that moment this morning when the bells chimed, and I felt my inner self embrace a stillness that is a longer and deeper quiet.  Something I haven't experienced in months, years.  I want to seek and experience the quiet awe of this season ahead.  

I hope that you will join me.