WAIT, BE STILL
“Be alert at all times…stand before the Son of Man”. (Luke 21.36)
SIGNS IN THE SUN, moon and stars, trouble among nations, rising sea levels, storms and wars… Our apocalyptic introduction to the gospel for a new Christian Year is physically and politically timely! Global warming, would-be empire proxy-warfare, melting ice caps, petrol/plastic poisoned planet, Brexit and Donald Trump vs Vlad Putin (or any available posturing tyrant with a Twitter account) could so easily be written into a footnote to the passage we’re reading from St Luke’s gospel this first Sunday of Advent.
So is this it then? End of Days? Second Coming of Christ? Could this really be the time? Apocalypse finally now?
Yes of course it could! No, of course it isn’t! Yes. No. I don’t know. Who knows? It seems pretty much every generation spawns those, sometimes many, who think they are living in the Last Days.
Perhaps it is a facet of human personality to think that of course it’s all going to end in ‘my’ life time. After all, ‘I’ am the one who is trying to make sense of all this, looking out at time and space through these eyes, in this head, with this brain…well you know what I’m saying. It’s ego thinking. Ego is driven by the instinct to survive. Ego is helpful to us in life threatening situations, fight or flight, ‘should I stay or should I go now’ moments. But ego ceases to be helpful when its survival at all costs mentality takes control of our whole thinking, feeling consciousness. When we believe we actually are our brain, body or ego, then we lose sight of our true being, our eternal existence in the true Oneness of being that we name God. This is how we let the ‘storms’ and ‘wild seas’ that Jesus spoke about overwhelm us.
But the Word of God (Christ, Christ’s self, according to the Prologue in John’s gospel) is within each one of us, to be found in the centre of our being, dug in like treasure in a field of grace by God. Advent is a time to reconnect with the treasure, the kingdom of God in us, with the Christ who comes like a baby, saying, “Wait, be still, see, HERE I AM.”
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 