the dance of advent

Opening Prayer: O Lord, during this season of Advent, help me be aware of and attentive to the ways you want to come to me and the new birth you want to conceive in me.  Come, Lord Jesus!

Scripture: Luke 1:26-38

Journal: What new and beautiful thing do you long for God to do within you?  How do you expect that to take place?  How do you think Mary felt when the Holy Spirit came upon her and the Most High overshadowed her?  What do you think that was like for her?  Where and how have you experienced communion with God lately?  What fruit did it produce in you?

Reflection: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Most High will overshadow you.  So that the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35) Communion, conception, incarnation, it has been the pattern of life with God from the very beginning of the Scriptures.  From the opening verses of Genesis, we see God in communion: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Three persons, one God, living in unspeakable love, unity, and intimacy.  It is communion of the best and deepest kind.  It is from this communion that creation was conceived and then brought into being (incarnation).  God was so full of love that he simply could not contain himself, so he created.  He spoke and things came to be.  His words became flesh, so to speak, ending in the focal point of all creation—man and woman, who were created in his image.  God breathed his divine breath into human beings and invited them into the life and laughter and love of the Trinity.  The whole reason we were created was so that we could experience what the saints and poets and pilgrims have called, “The Great Round Dance of Love.”  Thus, we were created out of communion, by communion, for communion.  Which means that in life with God, everything starts with communion: deep, intimate, encounter with the God who made us for himself.

This pattern comes to life beautifully during the season of Advent, when God sends the angel Gabriel to a teenage girl in Nazareth of Galilee to tell her of how he is finally, after all the years of waiting, going to come into the world to show us how fully and deeply and passionately we are loved.  In fact, Mary is going to be the very channel through with the Son of God will be born.  She is what scholars have called the theotokos, the God Bearer. 

“How will this be,” responds Mary, “since I am a virgin.”  And the angel’s response is priceless: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Most High will overshadow you.  So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”  Did you hear that?  All of this will start with communion.  The Holy Spirit is going to come upon Mary, and the Most High is going to overshadow her.  The word overshadow in the Greek means to envelop.  It is the same word that is used to describe the intimacy and the power and the glory of what happened to the disciples later on at the Mount of Transfiguration, when the cloud of God descended upon them and the voice of God spoke to them.  Mary was going to be enveloped by the Most High.  He was going to come to her and sweep her up in his divine embrace of love and power and glory.  That’s communion!  An encounter so intimate and so passionate that it would conceive new life inside of her.  “See, I am doing a new thing!” is how Isaiah describes it.  “Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19) 

You see, where life with God is concerned, communion always leads to conception.  That’s just the way it’s designed to work.  In fact, it’s what ministry is all about.  God draws us into communion that is so deep and so intimate that it creates new life in us.  Then that new life is born into the world.  It worked that way in the creation story, it worked that way at the Annunciation, and it works that way for me and you.  Thus, the beauty of the Advent season is that God wants to conceive something of himself deep within each of us, so that he might be born anew and afresh into the world through us. 

Which begs the question: What is the new and beautiful thing he is conceiving in you these days?  And how does he want that new and beautiful thing to be born into a lost and broken world in a way that will bring new life and new hope?  So, during this season, make time and space for the Holy Spirit to come upon you and the Most High to envelop you.  Allow that encounter to conceive something new and beautiful within you.  And then ask God to show you how and where and when he wants that new and beautiful thing to be born into the world.  “I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said.”  Come, Lord Jesus!

Pray

Closing Prayer: Thank you, O Lord for the beautiful dance of Advent.  Help me to enter into it so that I may be swept up into your loving embrace, transformed by your presence, awakened by your touch of love, and given to the world in some new and beautiful way.