Quotes for Advent

Some good Advent thoughts from Watch for the Light:

In “Yielding to God” by Philip Britts: “We are human and finite, and thus cannot live perpetually in a sense of expectation, or in a continuous Advent. We are distracted by many things. .. . Although we are tempted to exert ourselves and push ourselves forward in our search for God, the desire to climb nearer to God is nothing but egotistical satisfaction and self-aggrandizement. The way that Christ took was the low way. . . . It is not that we, as pilgrims, clib to a celestial city, but that the Christ child is born in the poverty of our hearts. . . .
It is easy to feel at this time of year that God is working on breaking down our hearts, reminding us how little we can accomplish on our own. “Human love cannot redeem.”


Another view: from “The God We Hardly Knew” by William Willimon: “We enjoy thinking of ourselves as basically generous, benevolent, giving people. That’s one reason why everyone, even the nominally religious, loves Christmas. Christmas is a season to celebrate our alleged generosity. . . . Yet I suggest we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people. The Christmas story – the one according to Luke not Dickens – is not about how blessed it is to be givers but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers. . . . We prefer to think of ourselves as givers – powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas. There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are. . . .

“I suspect that the difficulty of receiving is a factor in marriage, too. It’s painful to be thrust into such close proximity to another human being, day after day, year after year, until one gradually comes to see that one’s identity and character are due to an alarming degree, to what one has received from one’s spouse. Marriage is an everyday experience of living in the red – debtors to someone whom we have just begun to know. . . .

This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transforms us into people we don’t necessarily want to be.”



Gerard Manley Hopkins from "The Wreck of the Deutschland":

                Now burn, new born to the world,
               Doubled-naturèd name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
              Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
             Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not
                          a lightning of fire hard-hurled.