Advent 2013 | Wondering and Wandering Through a Full Season of Advent

Pondering the miracle of Advent

During the past few years, it's been an awesome venture to take each day during the season of Advent and reflect on a quote from history featuring someone's thoughts about Jesus and why He came. For 2013, here are some of the quotes that stirred my soul:

"Maker of the sun, He is made under the sun. In the Father He remains, from His mother He goes forth. Creator of heaven and earth, He was born on earth under heaven. Unspeakably wise, He is wisely speechless. Filling the world, He lies in a manger. Ruler of the stars, He nurses at His mother’s bosom. He is both great in the nature of God, and small in the form of a servant." – Saint Augustine 

"Straw-dirt floor, dusty flanks of donkeys; crumbling, crooked walls; no bed to carry that pain and the child laid to cry in a trough. Who would have chosen the God of all the heavens and earth be born in this place? Who, but the same God who stands in the darker, fouler rooms of our hearts and says let the God of heaven and earth be born here – in this place.” – Leslie Leyland Fields 

"In the gift of Christmas, the unassailable, omnipotent God became a baby, giving us the ultimate example of letting our defenses down. There is no way to have a real relationship without becoming vulnerable to hurt. And Christmas tells us that God became breakable and fragile. God became someone we could hurt. Why? To get us back. He wants the relationship to be restored." – Tim Keller  

"Seekers and searchers of all times have looked toward the heavens in order to find God. Then the gift was given. Mary's searching was interrupted by an angel who promised that soon, very soon, in a matter of nine months, she would look not up but down, into the face of the baby in her arms, into the face of God. So it is with all who wake up to find themselves found by Emmanuel, God with us." – John Neuhaus  

"He found a Golgotha, where He was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where He was born; for to His tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy as the cross at last. From the creche to the cross is an inseparable line. What a wonder that the eternal Word of God did not shun being born. Grace and Truth is a person - Jesus come to you in the flesh." – John Donne 

"God can not only hold our grief. God can heal our grief. Not in a little quick way, but in a huge, eternal way – a way that matches the extent of it. God sent his Son that first Christmas to take on the darkness, to invite into himself the whole universe-sized wave of sin and pain and brokenness and grief. Jesus the Son of God held it all, on the cross, suffered it all for us, with an eternal capacity for suffering that we cannot imagine. Jesus paid it all, with his death. Because he is God, he could suffer so, and he could pay perfectly, and he could rise victorious. "The light shines in the darkness," John writes, "and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5). I will speak those words, even in the darkness." – Kathleen Nielson 

"For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is, He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. He Himself went through the whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life, hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace, and thought it was worthwhile." – Dorothy Sayers  

"Despite our best efforts to keep Him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin's womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked 'No Entrance' and left through a door marked 'No Exit.'" – Peter Larson 

"The soft light from a stable door lies on the midnight lands; the wise men's star burns evermore, over all the desert sands. Unto all peoples of the earth a little Child brought light; and never in the darkest place can it be utter night. No flickering torch, no wavering fire, but Light – the Life of men; whatever clouds may veil the sky, never is night again." – Lillian Cox 

"The (Christmas) story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him." – C. S. Lewis  

"Have you ever seen wealth in such great penury? How could He who was rich have become, for our sake, so poor that He had neither bed nor bedding but was laid in a manger? O immeasurable wealth concealed in poverty! He is bound with swaddling bands, yet He breaks the bonds of sin. Before He could speak He taught the wise men and converted them. He lies in a manger, yet He rocks the whole world." – Saint Chrysostom 

Persevering through the season can be a miracle in and of itself

This year, we also lit the Advent candles each evening, reading the Scriptures (or The Jesus Storybook Bible) with our kids – from the first declaration that Jesus would come in Genesis 3 until the announcement of His arrival in Luke 2. 

Of course, it wasn't the smoothest collection of evenings. Sometimes we were late. Sometimes no one was really listening. Sometimes sleep was more desired than knowing that the Savior has come, is here, and will come again.

But isn't that the point? He came even when we weren't looking for Him. In fact, He made no big show. He humbled Himself for us. And so with Him in mind, it was worth the humbling process of making it through twenty-four evenings with our kids, taking our own journey of wanderings and wondering at the possibility of the miraculous again and again. 

And though many times any one of us in the Sullivan fam could be faulted for being more excited about blowing out the candles than reading, praying, or singing about Advent on any given night, the sparkle that occurred in each of our eyes in a moment here or there on one of those nights before the last candle flickered its final flame testifies that Jesus' arrival is a mysterious occurrence that still captures the imagination of those who dare to look into His coming again.

– Sully

Curiosity piqued? Something inside you being stirred? Go ahead and connect.