Tim Keller, ‘wonder is involuntary praise, joy…wonder, even for 15 minutes each day, to develop praise’ Isaiah 9:1 – 7 ( 12/23/07 )
As we, I, finish ‘advent wonders 2020’, I cannot help but see how this season has been a silent season, a time of voices being muted.
Mute comes from the Greek, myein “to be shut.”
Some writers see muted speech as the powerful expressions of total emotions. Emily Dickinson wrote the “best grief is tongueless,” and Thomas Wolfe defined mute as “choking exasperation and wordless shame.”
As I write this day, the news reports are laced with stories of the pandemic virus Covid-19 mutating in London, South Africa and France. Mutation occurs when one life form is ‘shut down/off’ and another begins. In this time of seemingly endless lockdowns, fractured economies and where breathes are taken and deaths given, living hopes wane.
And yet, … Jesus’ birth story is one of voices, songs, angelic words of eternal hope: a prophecy, the Messianic prophecy fulfilled.
For over 400 years before Jesus’ birth the voice of the prophets in Israel were muted, silent. The people longed to hear God’s words, his voice. But there was nothing.
Silences. Silence.
And then … and then, angels speak: they speak to the elder priest Zechariah; to the virginal teen Mary; they speak to Joseph and Magi in dreams; they speak, sing, to shepherds in fields. And the spirit speaks also, to Anna the Prophetess and to the waiting elderly Simeon in the temple.
There is an after story, a Boxing Day story, to Advent: we are all to speak, sing, shout, as shepherds who function as angelic messengers, for,
when the angels had left them and gone into heaven, shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
In, for all advents, we are to speak to one another; go to our Bethlehems; see him deeply and worship. We are to sing Jesus’ name, as Joseph did that first advent.
And as we return to our everyday after this Christmas, let us glorify and praise God for,
‘For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given, Isaiah 9:6
Jesus, our Messiah is given. And so, shepherds, angels, peoples sing.
I sing- Jesus. I sing Jesus. Jesus.
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