Monday Morning Musing: When Times End

Advent invites us into circular thinking around time. Scripture readings are of the apocalyptic variety, which means they are more about an unfolding than an ending. Still, in that unfolding there are beginnings and endings and in between times.

Advent itself comes to us as the first of a string of beginnings: of the Church year, of the life of Jesus at Christmas, and as we come to understand Jesus as Messiah in many epiphanies. I do love to think of this cycle in the Church year, Advent-Christmas-Epiphany, as one. It takes the pressure off of reaching the pinnacle of perfection on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. We won't reach that perfection until, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, we are fully known.

My beloved and I are coming toward an ending of one leg of our Advent travels. On Tuesday, we will fly back through the time we lost on our way here. To our heart's delight, we will land in the City of Angels, where 2/5s of our hearts reside, just in time to celebrate our precious daughter's birthday. The day she was born seems like only a few years ago, not closer to three decades ago!

Every season has a beginning and and ending and there is a time for each. Sometimes, the in-between days are full and rich and pass so quickly we can hardly catch our breath. Sometimes they stretch out like a lazy pet in a patch of sunshine with nowhere to be and nothing pressing to do. Neither has greater value than the other and our lives are composed of both.

In this space where I often share the writing of others, may these words find you. May the blessings of the Christ child, whose arrival in unexpected and mysterious ways we will celebrate again before I next write, shine on you and within you.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ~ 1 Corinthians 13: 12

I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. God has made everything suitable for its time; and has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before God. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

Ecclesiastes 3: 10-15

Here's a link to my favorite lector telling us of the birth of Jesus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eff0cqYefYY