Getting into Advent– Turn to Me Re-post
I admit, I have been caught in a mental frenzy of Christmas and life these past couple of weeks and though I really wanted to start Advent off right, I have already failed. By that, I mean that I haven’t fully focused myself yet on what this season means. But I do seem to find myself waking every morning to a song that was playing when I walked into church on Sunday based on Isaiah, Turn to Me by Fr. John Foley of the St. Louis Jesuits.
I use to listen to this as I would walk the track in the early mornings before I would go to work (when I was in my early 20’s and struggling then too!). I can actually see myself turning a corner of the track and the sun rising above the horizon into it’s fullness. I remember thinking how magnificent it was. Almost as though God was greeting me and reminding me that He was present. I would linger on lines like, “I am me to comfort you, who are you to be afraid?” I carried a lot of fear when I was younger and felt like a fish out of water and this was a song that grounded me in the day and in who I was.
I can’t help wonder if Mary, in her unexpected circumstances of pregnancy, mystical pregnancy at that, was grounding herself in the scriptures as she faithfully carried out God’s call. The tempo of this song speaks to the building of inner strength as we focus on our truth. “There is no other, none beside me, I call your name.” Mary understood that she was being called. As a faithful Jewish girl, she would have carried all of this scripture in her heart, which is why I wonder if Isaiah spoke to her as well. So each morning this week, I have woken with this song already playing in my head. It reminds me of the “temporariness” of everything, of a God in control, of who I am in the grand scheme of things and to whom I belong.
This, for me, is the most important reason to give energy to Advent. As we wander through a world that tells us who we are, what we wear, what we own, or who we should interact with, we can be brought back to the truth;
we are children of a loving God. In a time when all the rhetoric is about what we are denied, what we think we are entitled to, when people are losing income and their futures, losing hope and faith in all the things we were told not to put hope and faith into to begin with, we hear that we can start again, start anew and ask ourselves, “who are we to be afraid?”
Or maybe the song is saying something more to me, maybe my heart is centering me before my mind can interfere by throwing in the “to-do” list or by worrying about all the things there are to worry about. Maybe God is telling me to remember to rest in this season and to be still so I can gather all of the gifts he has in store. Maybe I just need to listen.
I needed this post this morning to challenge me to put some things in my life into the correct priority. There is no reason to be afraid when we know that God is there with us and loves us unconditionally. Thank you, Annette, and God bless.
Sorry that I didn’t respond to this. I hope that you have peace!