by Christie Purifoy | Dec 21, 2012 | Advent, grief, Jesus, Uncategorized
Brown leaves are everywhere like an ugly, soggy blanket, and I want snow so badly I ache.
I want to be tucked in beneath that still, beautiful whiteness. I want to sleep on and on and forget how ugly this world is. How broken.
I pray for snow, and I tell God I don’t want to live in this world anymore. I don’t want to wake up day after day in a world where children die such violent deaths (whether it’s one young man with a gun or a government with a bomb). Enough.
I tell God how screwed up everything is, and I’m not praying to an infant in a manger, I’m praying to one whose “… eyes were like blazing fire … [whose] feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and [whose] voice was like the sound of rushing waters” (Revelation 1:14-15).
Snow refuses to fall, the world stays stubbornly brown, and I begin to wonder what that voice like rushing water is saying.
I can speak so quickly, so effortlessly of hope and heaven. Of no more tears and all made right.
I am quick to talk but oh, so slow to listen.
What message blazes in the eyes of the one who kicked over those tables at the temple?
I want to sing of snow and silent nights, but I’ve been walking this Advent road, and I can’t easily forget that Mary sang of justice not silence.
Could it be that I am not grieved enough? Could it be that I am not angry enough?
Because, looking at him, I know what love looks like: giving small children the welcome of my arms and kicking those tables with fire in my eyes.
But this is no Jesus with guns blazing, like a video-game hero out for revenge. That’s the world’s way. The old way. What I see in his fiery eyes is a peacemaker’s fire. A turn-the-other-cheek fire. A fire that brings food to the hungry. A fire that will not let the world forget what children suffer.
This is a radically upside down kind of love. It lays down its rights (to safety, to comfort, to not be inconvenienced) in order to care for the weakest, the smallest, the most despised.
I no longer want the oblivion of snow.
I want a torch. I want a bonfire. I want to shine the light of The Ancient of Days into every despicable, dark corner until, yes, I’ll say it, until all is made right.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 19, 2012 | Advent, God's Love, guest post, Jesus, motherhood, Uncategorized
I met Amy at The Festival of Faith and Writing in Michigan last spring. During a five minute chat, we discovered we’d attended the same college, attended the same college-town church, majored in English lit., and had recently found ourselves at home in episcopal churches. Needless to say, we kept in touch.
I’m delighted to share this advent story at Amy’s place today:
I know that Advent should include repentance. In fact, repentance is supposed to be an integral part of any advent observance. The idea, I think, is that we must prepare ourselves to receive Christ.
I’ve mostly avoided thinking about it.
I far prefer to meditate on ideas like wonder or anticipation.
If I think much about sin at all it’s to imagine the sin out there. For instance, the dark injustice of human trafficking or the world orphan crisis.
I’d rather not confront the darkness in my own heart.
Until the parents of twenty first-graders walked into a nightmare.
…
You can read the rest of the story here. While you’re there, check out Amy’s own beautiful advent series. Like me, she’s posting every day this season.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 16, 2012 | Advent, Jesus, prayer, Uncategorized
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 15, 2012 | Advent, Jesus, Music, Uncategorized
Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus
Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.
Born thy people to deliver,
born a child and yet a King,
born to reign in us forever,
now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal spirit
rule in all our hearts alone;
by thine all sufficient merit,
raise us to thy glorious throne.
– Charles Wesley
Explore the growing collection of Advent imagery here.
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by Christie Purifoy | Dec 4, 2012 | Advent, Family, Jesus, motherhood, Uncategorized
It is dark, four children are finally quiet and in bed, and I am carrying a basket of folded laundry up the stairs.
I lift my head and see this: the tall double-hung window that presides over the turn in our staircase. The bottom is etched glass, and a battery-operated candle on the sill has filled it with one perfect rainbow. The top is clear glass, and a full moon hangs precisely at its center.
A full moon and a rainbow. I’ve heard the voice of God in signs like those.
I stop and listen, but I don’t hear that voice tonight.
Maybe I silenced it when I shouted at the boys? First, there was sword fighting with the curtain rods I had carefully placed in the corner (we’re in the middle of painting the family room). I couldn’t handle the noise, was worried the glass finials would break. Next, there was jumping from the couch, so I left them alone, yelled over my shoulder, “Someone will be crying soon!”
When the older boy started crying, I had no sympathy. Later, when I finally checked and saw the blood on his scalp, I somehow had even less.
Putting them to bed, I stepped on the baby Jesus, and I saw red. The baby Jesus from our wooden nativity set is sharp, and my foot hurt, but I saw red because I had told them, told them!, not to bring the Christmas decorations up into their room. It’s like a black hole in there, and I can’t take it anymore, and why did it have to be the baby Jesus accusing me with its painted-on-smile? Why not the donkey? I’d have had no problem throwing that donkey against the wall.
Lying in bed, I think about the full moon and the rainbow. I think about how silent they were. “Jesus, where are you??”
I hear these words in my head: Jesus was a little boy.
I tend to think of the incarnation and remember the baby. Or, the man. Never the little boy.
And the truth is, I don’t want to think about Jesus, the little boy. I don’t want to imagine Jesus jumping off the furniture. I don’t want to consider whether Jesus knew how to use his inside voice.
I want God to speak to me in rainbows and full moons. I want to see angels and follow stars.
I resist the thought that Jesus might be nearer than I think. Perhaps as near as the toddler bed down the hall where a little boy clutches a wooden Mary in one hand and a Lego astronaut in the other.
Too near.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 2, 2012 | Advent, Jesus, prayer, Uncategorized
A prayer for the first Sunday of Advent:
Father in heaven, you came to earth in the person of your Son, Jesus Christ. …
Fill, we pray you, our every moment with his threefold advent. As then he came and now he comes and will one day come again, awaken us to the then and now and one day of his presence in this present moment. As we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, may all our time be clothed by eternity until we find ourselves at last in the home you have prepared for seekers and searchers who, in our seeking and searching, were hopelessly lost. Give us, we pray, the grace to surrender to being found.
This we ask in the name above every name, the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen. Let it be.
– from a prayer by Richard John Neuhaus, God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas
Read Advent 2011 (Day 1) here.
