This Pinprick Moment of Now

Wake up! Watch! Be Alert! Sleepers arise! These are the cacophonous calls to Advent. It certainly isn’t the time for sleeping—even though on those chilly mornings, snug under the covers, slumber beckons.

No, now is the time of awakening. Okay, I’ll get up—but what for? 

The early Christians were keeping an eye out for the return of Jesus. They were assured that he was only moments away, and warned that they’d better be ready when he gets here. Don’t be like those foolish bridesmaids who were unprepared—be ready!

But the early Christians waited and waited and waited some more. Jesus never did come barreling down through the clouds to rescue them from this mundane and painful existence. Now, nearly 2,000 years later, that anxious message—he’s coming right back!—is getting rather old and not terribly potent. So don’t mind me as I pull the covers up and snuggle deeper into this warm bed of slumber.

But the right message is still, Wake up! Just because Jesus didn’t come flying through the sky and take us away doesn’t mean that God isn’t present. The fallacy of the whole Second Coming idea is that it assumes that God is not present in the world—that, somehow, his Presence departed with him at the Ascension.

The truth is that God did not, does not, and will not ever abandon us. We, on the other hand, can easily abandon God by sleeping our way through life.

The cacophonous calls to Advent serve a great purpose. Not so much to try and cajole us into anxiety-induced states about Jesus coming back to judge us. Leave that childishness behind and wake up to an even deeper revelation of God’s Presence—right here, right now.

Advent is the season of opportunity. In this pinprick moment of Now, be aware that God is eager to pour incredible beauty into you and through you into the world. In this pinprick moment of Now, we share an opportunity to awaken ourselves to God’s possibility in our midst. If we are alert to that possibility, God can do many things to bring healing to our pained world.

Of course, Advent takes us to the next season in the month of December: Christmas. In Advent, we prepare ourselves to be aware of God’s anxious desire to return in our midst. At the Nativity we decide, much as Mary did, whether or not to allow Nativity to happen again and again and again.

Wake up! Watch! Be alert! Sleepers arise! The moment of Now is upon us. God impregnates you and me with an anxious desire to shape this world away from torture and war, from oppressing the hungry, the poor, the old, and the infirm to a new realization of hope, love, and joy. Only when you and I are awake enough in this pinprick moment of Now to allow God to pour through us can God’s desire ever be realized.

The star is rising and—look!—it stands over you. Are you ready to be Nativity?

Joel t