1st Sunday in Advent with Bonhoeffer
For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.
Trust in God at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us. Psalm 62:5-8
“Be brave for my sake, dearest Maria, even if this letter is your only token of love from me this Christmas-tide. We shall both experience a few dark hours…and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity, we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of separation whose purpose we fail to understand…
And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong…Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us. Whatever people may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as Love and rules the world and rules our lives.”
WAITING
Advent is a season of waiting: an art forgotten by our impatient age. In tender letters to his loved ones, Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggles honestly with life’s deepest questions, forced to wait in a Nazi prison for a release that will never come. Through the eyes of faith, he comes to perceive the cosmic reversal that Christmas brings. God is in the manger. There is wealth in poverty, light in darkness. God, who is Love, rules the world and rules our lives. May we, with Bonhoeffer, declare with hope that in Christ “no evil can befall us.”
What hard questions are you asking right now?
What practice might help you to “wait in silence” for God through these 24 days of Advent?
What is the Christmas message that you most long to hear and believe?
