Advent 4: HOPE
2020: a Christmas Star in the darkest night
In tomorrow night's sky, the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter will appear as a bright "double planet" for the first time since the Middle Ages! Recalling the Scripture, “The star which they had seen in the East went before them,” 17th century astronomer Johannes Kepler calculated that a similar conjunction happened shortly before the birth of Jesus. Our 2020 "Christmas Star" blazes out into the solstice sky: the longest night of the northern hemisphere. What weary heart won't feel a thrill of hope? Learn more and then head outside!
Beloved writer Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) writes this as she stargazes from her New York apartment window during Advent:
“When I think of the incredible, incomprehensible sweep of creation above me, I have the strange reaction of feeling fully alive. Rather than feeling lost and unimportant and meaningless, set against galaxies which go beyond the reach of the furthest telescopes, I feel that my life has meaning..I feel a soaring in my heart that the God who could create all this—and out of nothing—can still count the hairs of my head.”
On this 4th final Sunday of Advent, may our selection of Madeleine L'Engle poems add rich meaning to your own stargazing.
"The Glory"
Without any rhyme without any reason
my heart lifts to light in this bleak season
Believer and wanderer caught by salvation
stumbler and blunderer into Creation
In this cold blight where marrow is frozen
it it God's time my heart has chosen
In paradox and story parable and laughter
find I the glory here in hereafter.
(Madeleine L'Engle)
"The Risk of Christmas, 1973"
This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war and hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out
and the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honor and truth were trampled by scorn--
Yet here did the Savior make his home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn--
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
(Madeleine L'Engle)
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices!
Primitive people used to watch the sun drop lower on the horizon in great terror, afraid that one day it was going to go so low that it would never rise again; they would be left in unremitting night.
Somewhere in the depths of our unconsciousness we share that primordial fear, and when there is the first indication that the days are going to lengthen, our hearts, too lift with relief. The end has not come: JOY! The night is far spent. The day is at hand. (Madeleine L'Engle)