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| John the Forerunner Artwork by Kristen & Kevin Howdeshell |
Advent's Invitation:
Enter the holy wild.
Pay attention to the voice in the wilderness.
Worship Jesus.
The three phrases above I have kept coming back to throughout 2023. And they ring true all the more as we step into Advent with John the Forerunner / Baptizer, the key prophet of Advent who prepares us for Jesus' coming by being the voice in the wilderness:
Finally they said (to John), “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” + John 1:22-23
(John the Forerunner / Baptizer) answers: “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:23). John lives in the desert, a lifeless world of dangers, temptations, and failure, and he is proclaiming that God is acting even in this place. His identity is that of one shaken awake and himself shaking all awake to recognize this action of God. ... I think John gives two reasons for our Advent joy: we are people who are shaken awake to God’s action, and we are people pointing in hope to the action of God.
+ "Joy and the Baptist (3rd Sunday of Advent)," Michael Rubbelke
The passage above is part of the Revised Common Lectionary readings for this upcoming weekend of Advent, and the words that of Michael Rubbelke focus in on the great joy during our darkest hours that we look for during this season.
These reflections also complement words written at the beginning of A.J. Swoboda's The Dusty Ones. Swoboda speaks about how we can experience God coming to us in the wilderness as the wilder One we need, the wilder One John was making straight the way for:
These reflections also complement words written at the beginning of A.J. Swoboda's The Dusty Ones. Swoboda speaks about how we can experience God coming to us in the wilderness as the wilder One we need, the wilder One John was making straight the way for:
Jesus is wild, not caged.
Jesus, one finds, isn't tame.
He isn't docile ...
This wildness of truth can't be trapped in words or phrases or idioms; truth is the very wild God in Jesus.
Wondering about this One who is wilder than the wilderness has helped increase my appreciation for the season of Advent all the more. And Mark Buchanan's The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God that proved to be a good companion at the beginning of 2023 includes words I'm returning to again.
Below is an excerpt from Buchanan's work, including a timeless quote from G.K. Chesterton and a scene in C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, both of which have continued to stir me in how I look to approach the desert spaces where Jesus offers streams of living waters.
The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.
+ G.K. Chesterton
God of the Holy Wild(erness): Rest in Him & Risk with Him
The Holy Wild describes life with the God who is.
The Holy Wild is what life, drunk to the lees, lived to the hilt, is like – life where we walk with the God who is surprising, dangerous, mysterious, alongside us though we fail to recognize Him, then disappearing the minute we do (ex. see the Emmaus story). It is the terrain where God doesn't always make sense of our sad or bland lives, our calamities and banalities, but who keeps meeting us in the thick and thin of those lives.
In Your God Is Too Safe, I used the famous story from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the most famous book of C.S. Lewis's most famous work, the Chronicles of Narnia. This is the story where Mr. Beaver, in response to Lucy's question of whether the great lion Aslan is "quite safe," explodes, "Safe? Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good."
It's a great scene. But equally great, and lesser known, is the scene from the Narnia adventure The Silver Chair. A haughty girl named Jill Pole lands in Narnia with Eustace Scrubb – once a spoiled and whiny child who, in an earlier visit to Narnia experienced an agonizing but transforming encounter with Aslan. Jill gets into a tussle with Eustace at a cliff's edge, and she ends up pushing him off. As Eustace falls, Aslan rushes up and blows a huge stream of breath to catch Eustace and, magic-carpet-like, carry him far, far away to safety – and to danger. Aslan then turns and, to Jill's relief, walks away into the forest.
But Jill grows thirsty. She can hear from within the forest the sound a stream. Her thirst finally drives her to seek the source of this sound. She proceeds cautiously, afraid. She soon discovers the stream but is paralyzed by what she sees there. Aslan, huge and golden, still as a statue but terribly alive, sitting beside the water. She waits for a long time, wrestling with her thoughts, hoping he will go away.
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| Underwater Lion + DF |
Aslan finally speaks: "If you are thirsty, you may drink."
Jill is startled by this and holds back.
"Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion.
"I am dying of thirst," said Jill.
"Then drink," said the Lion.
"May I – could I – would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And just as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her near frantic.
"Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I come?"
"I make no promise," said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
"Do you eat girls?" she said.
"I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
"I daren't come and drink," said Jill.
"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.
"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then."
"There is no other stream," said the Lion.
Which raises the question I really want to ask:
Can God be trusted? Is there no other stream?
Is the character of God such that we can both risk for Him and rest in Him?
My conviction is that, unless and until we rest in God, we'll never risk for God. We will at most skirt the edges of the Holy Wild but never venture in, and probably not even that much. We will sit by the stream all day, dying of thirst but not daring to bend to drink.
If I truly desire the Holy Wild – living face-to-face with the beautiful, dangerous God, not safe but good – I need to know who this God is. I need to know Him, more and more, deeper and deeper, with biblical clarity. To know Him in my head and in my creeds but also – with King David's instincts – in my guts and in my bones.
I need to drink and drink from the stream, even if it means – especially if it means – getting swallowed up.
There's only one way to get there from here: worship.
+ Mark Buchanan, The Holy Wild, pgs. 23-27
Jesus is the Lion of Judah,
fierce and wild and good.
+ Mark Buchanan, The Holy Wild
Bonus Story: The Masai Chief, the Missionary and the Lion God
Vincent Donovan went as a missionary to the Masai people of East Africa. He went to teach them the story of God, but instead he found them teaching him. Once he told them how God had led the nomadic Abraham to see that he was the God of all peoples and just of one tribe. Could it be, he asked, that they had worshiped this High God without knowing him – the truly unknown God?
There was silence. Then someone asked a question. "This story of Abraham – does it speak only to the Masai? Or does it speak also to you? Has your tribe found the High God? Have you known him?" Donavan was stumped. He thought of how in France since the time of Joan of Arc, the French people had associated God with a quest for glory. He thought of fellow Americans who had always asked God to bless "our side" in wars. After a long time he replied, "No, we have not found the High God. My tribe has not known him. For us, too, he is the unknown God. But we are searching for him. I have come a long, long distance to invite you to search for him. Let us search for him together."
Months later, as Donovan spoke with a Masai elder about his own struggle with belief and unbelief, the elder explained that his language had two words for faith. One simply meant to agree with something. That, said the elder, was like a white hunter shooting down an animal from a distance. To speak of real belief, he said, took another word, a word that referred to a lion going after its prey, speeding to catch it, leaping at it with a blow that kills, then enfolding it into its great arms to make it part of himself. That, said the Masai elder, is faith. Donovan listened in amazement. The elder continued:
We did not search you out, Padri. We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush ... into our villages, our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have done this. ... We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.
In the end, the lion is God, the God who began to seek us even before we knew it, in the time before our time.
+ Leighton Ford, The Attentive Life, pgs. 62-63
Here are links to other recent Advent articles:
Advent Story of God | Immanuel: God Present with Us, for Us; The Bold & Courageous 1st Advent Hymn; My Honest Advent; Advent Films Reflections: A Quiet Place, Arrival, Children of Men, Joyeux Noel; Praying with Mary and Jesus; Making Room for Limits; Making Room for Outsiders; Experience God-with-Us Today in Your Fears; Waiting is the Womb in Which We Are Formed; Christ with Shopping Bags or Generous Christ?; Advent Film Series Reflection: All the Light We Cannot See; When We're Afraid, God Pursues; He Is Not One to Leave Us Hurting; Great Joy in Our Darkest Hours
With wild grace and holy shalom,
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