The third Sunday in Advent lightens the penitential season of waiting expectantly with Joy. The reading challenge us to rejoice in all things. Some things most people don't want to rejoice in. There's a lot of things actually. I've never seen or been told that a child rejoiced in being spanked; I've never been told that someone was checking into rehab for an addiction while rejoicing in the Lord. I tend to think that both of those situations cause the person to think "This is some BS right here." However, it is what we are called to look past this week and to rejoice that we have been given tasks because:
"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to
proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bring up the brokenhearted, to
proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners"
(Isaiah 1:1).
While the reading in Isaiah continues through to the 11th verse, the initial first verse gives the reason why Advent is joyous season. It is a season of rebuilding and of renewal. I am of the opinion that spanking a child has more to do with inflicting pain and causing shock. I think finding other ways to discipline children might be better even though my siblings, their children, and I have all been raised with parental shock therapy to change our behavior. It is actually the change, the transition, that God calls us to focus on that is to give us Joy. It is Joy to turn back to God looking hopefully and forward to the future. It is as verse 4 states, "They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations." Children are given to generations of people and not just their parents. Children are given to communities to watch as they grow and change into fruitful adults. The life cycle rebuilds families as people wax and wane together with the tides of experience that life brings to them.
As my friends have gotten sober over time, I find that they change in ways that their families can't handle. Mine couldn't handle that I would go to meetings with them, and eventually, I, too, quit smoking through another discipline. Renewal is the way to return to God in Joy. What I have witnessed the most is when people change that those around them don't or they try to control the change. Change is fluidic.
One of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning, wrote "there comes a time when self-pity becomes malignant, seducing us to into self-destructive behavioral patterns of withdrawal, isolation, drinking, drugging, and so forth. We simply give ourselves the grace to to set a time limit on our self-pity" (Ruthless Trust). Brennan Manning, a Franciscan priest and recovering alcoholic, found himself a ragamuffin and a beloved of God. I like his work because he focuses on joy in our identity as the chosen beloved of God and not as a we should be. None of us are as we should be. When God's Joy is the center of our lives, we find that we are not giving into peer pressure, or at least, I do. When I live from whom I think God sees me as, I tend not to care about what other people think so much.
One of the things that I have come to know this Advent season more than before, as I am writing more poetry, is that I have lost the childlikeness that my faith once had. I didn't lose it. I gave it up. I found it to be too difficult to continue to have around such serious adults in my life whom only understood me as a child. My spiritual life used to be very playful; it isn't anymore. It isn't because I became very tired of the judgment that I would get from people. People who know me will know that I have very little trust for those whom have a need for age appropriateness when people are past a high school age. Once we consider people to be adults, I think we should, as a society, accept their desire to choose their own paths. What's sad is that I gave up the discipline of joy in my life for more adult disciplines which is similar to the gamer experience of people thinking that game playing is for children.
The discipline of blowing bubbles with God is a far better one than voraciously studying scripture when someone is in a time of renewal. It seems to me that a thriving spiritual life requires crayons, children, laughter, and love be to be joyous. When we focus on the mud in our lives, in our suffering, we forget that closeness we all can have with God. We have the ability to create. Creation is good. It brought about such joy to God that he set aside an entire day for us to renew our lives in Him. I hope to remember throughout the year that the Sabbath, whether someone chooses Saturday or Sunday, needs to be a joyous experience with God.
May we all remember the Joy of being the renewed beloved of God.
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