Holy Adventing: Reflections on Wanting and Waiting
Suzanne DeWitt Hall
Day 1: Holy Adventing
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us. For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. Not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which he sees? But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.
In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don’t know how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can’t be uttered. He who searches the hearts knows what is on the Spirit’s mind, because he makes intercession for the saints according to God.
—Romans 8:18-27 (WEB)
Today’s passage speaks about creation’s expectant yearning for what is to come. It talks about the pain of being subject to the reality of this world, which includes feelings of disconnectedness, discouragement, and pain. We often feel isolated and sometimes even downright hopeless.
This is one of the reasons the season of Advent is so important. It reminds us of what is to come, and who is to come. No wonder we push Christmas earlier and earlier each year, putting out red and green decorations right after Halloween, giving a token nod to Thanksgiving and forgetting the importance of the purple season of waiting. We are desperate for the Christ to come, desperate for the one who arrives as a baby but who grows to embrace us, to touch our blindness and deafness, to stem our bleeding, to wash our feet and feed us breakfast when we are cold and discouraged.
Our spirits groan while we wait.
But we are not alone.
The Spirit groans not only for us, but with us. God longs for the future which can and will be, and even now is—even more than we do.
In Luke 12 Jesus tells us he came to set the earth on fire and wishes it were already burning. He longed for the culmination of his mission to oneness then, and still longs for it now.
The God we long for has come, is coming, and will always come—a Holy, perpetual adventing.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
—John Donne
Suzanne DeWitt Hall