the Third Wednesday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Hope Amidst Uncertainty
A little over a year ago, I sat in a park, bundled up with a small group of people trying to safely do church in the midst of a global pandemic. Beside me sat a man about my age, whom I hadn’t seen since well before the start of the pandemic. I didn’t know much about this tattoo-covered man, besides that (like many others who worship in our community) he had been living on and off the streets, he struggled with addictions, and he may or may not have been arrested at some point. As the gathering continued, I felt prompted to offer this man a job doing renovations on my late grandmother’s home. This felt like a strange prompting, since I wasn’t sure of his first name, let alone his last name. I knew nothing about his labour skills, or even if he was looking for a job. But I couldn’t shake that gut feeling. After the service I walked up to him and awkwardly asked, “How do you feel about manual labour?” He kindly smiled and, without laughing at me, said he didn’t mind it. I explained that I was renovating a house and wondered if he was looking for some work. It turns out he was. For the next two months, Andrew began working alongside our renovation crew to restore my grandmother’s house.
During those months, I began to see that this man was so much more than his housing situation and his addictions. He was a father of three, desperately trying to repair his life so he could step up and be a dad to his kids, who were in the custody of his father, their grandfather. He was a talented musician and an incredibly hard worker who once had his own successful roofing company. As I learned more about his story and his life, his resiliency began to inspire me. I was able to see beyond his exterior and his past, and I witnessed the transformation that God was doing in his life. It was the kind of transformation that only God can do. Somewhere in the midst of this transformation, God began to write a plot twist that only he could initiate; Andrew and I began to fall in love.
***
Fast forward to almost a year later. I was about to sit down to the dinner table with Andrew and his three children (who were now in his custody), when we heard a knock at the door. When I got to the door, there stood two detectives who informed us that they were there because Andrew’s DNA matched evidence from a crime that took place back in 2016. I watched the detectives walk my boyfriend down the street, where they would arrest him out of sight of the children. In that moment, I felt as if my world was crashing around me. This was completely unexpected, and felt like a sucker punch to all my dreams for our future. I panicked about what it meant for us as a couple, for our future hopes of marriage, for the care of his three children, and for all the work Andrew had done to put his life back together. I questioned what this new reality meant in light of God’s promises of restoration and healing.
Andrew was released that night, to proceed with life as usual until his trial. With fairly serious charges looming, I still don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if he will serve time or not. I don’t know if I will be left to care for his three children on my own. I don’t know if our dreams of marriage will be put on hold. There are so many things that I just don’t know. What I do know is that, after so much work to rebuild his life, this act of justice feels so unjust. Yet, in the midst of all the uncertainty, I am reminded that Advent is a time during which we are called to wait in hope. Even in the midst of pain and uncertainty, God calls his people to embrace the tension of hopefully waiting.
In the midst of an unknown future, the nation of Israel was called to wait in hope. With destruction at their doorstep and darkness all around, God reminds Israel through the words of his prophet Isaiah that, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” (Isaiah 11:1) This verse reminds us that even out of something dead (a stump), new growth will come and promises will be kept.
Christmas is a story about the unexpected: God showing up to an unexpecting world, in an unexpected way, to completely turn things unexpectedly upside down. He came to bring about a world where “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat…The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain.” (Isaiah 11: 6,8,9) Truth is sometimes lost in the absurdity of these words. But hidden in the absurdity is the deep truth of God’s restoration. One day, all will be set right. There will be no more misuse of power. There will no longer be a desire to harm one another. Lives will not lie in ruin, destroyed by addictions, hate and hurt. All creatures in God’s creation will be fully reconciled to one another; even those pitted against each other as natural enemies will finally be at peace. This is the continual promise of God–that out of death restoration will come–but we still live in a time in which the fullness of this restoration is yet to come. We live in a time where, in the midst of God’s restoration, we still experience setbacks and heartaches. Pain and death are still with us, but we hold them in the tension of hope. We hope for a future where all will be set right. In the midst of my own uncertain, unknown future, I am reminded to hold onto God’s promises of new growth, even if it has to come from a dead stump.
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