Endless orbits by our planet spinning round its speeding star
cannot trace creation’s secret: why we live and whose we are.
Jesus, you alone uncover nature’s rhythm, reason, rhyme,
so your birthday is our center; hinge of history and time.

These words, from Brian Wren’s hymn, “Hidden Christ, Alive Forever,” help us to remember, as we enter into the Advent season of our church year, what we as Christians are all about. Actually, even more than remember, they help us to focus, or to center ourselves—at a time when such centering is for many of us critical—on that which is in every way at the core of our very being and existence.

I don’t know about you, but after the last few months of feeling pretty thrown around by this economic rollercoaster we’ve all found ourselves strapped into—not to mention all the global and environmental uncertainties that surround us daily in the news—in the midst of all this, approaching the coming of Christmas has threatened in many ways for me to be tainted and spoiled. Countless Christians all over the world may find themselves, like maybe you or me, asking themselves some scary questions: Will I have enough money / time / energy to celebrate Christmas as I would like? Will I have a job that lasts past Christmas? Will we have a globe that exists beyond this generation? In so many ways, for so many people, the usual bustle of the pre-holiday season is being accompanied this year by something else—by the fluttering sense of impending disaster.

Which is exactly why there is an Advent before there is Christmas. When the elements of our earthly lives rise up to imprison us in the fear of what might happen next, Advent is the time to remind us and to center us, in Christ, on what is happening now. As a matter of fact, Advent is all about time—God’s time, which liberates us from what theologian Karl Rahner calls “a bleak, empty, fading succession of moments” and into a new possibility of “time itself redeemed.” Rahner goes on to say that “through the work of God in Christ…time now possesses a center that can preserve the present and gather into itself the future, a nucleus that fills the present with a future that is already effected—a focal point that coordinates the living present with the eternal future.” In other words, in the reality of the limited scope and span of our earthly time, now, in Christ, also the new reality of God’s eternal time for us all. Advent is the time for us to contemplate this incredible thought—that in Christ, God enters our world to tell us in person what is truly happening now: that no matter what happens, we are now in every way in God’s eternal and loving hands. This is our Advent hope and this is our Christmas joy. And this is how Brian Wren ends his hymn:

Christ our hope, alive among us, take our love, our work, our prayer.
We will trust and tell your purpose, braving evil and despair;
in your name befriending, mending, making peace and setting free,
showing, giving, and acclaiming signs of joy and jubilee.

May the blessings of God’s time be upon you all.

Pastor Kari