the Second Tuesday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
The Tension of Time
For most (all?) of us, the past year and a half has shifted our understanding and experiences of time. I can no longer remember whether the pandemic started in 2020 or 2019. If you ask me when I last went to a sports game or a concert, it simultaneously feels like six months and six years ago. What are my plans for a month from now? I don’t know if I should make any plans, since they may not be possible.
Along with how our perception of time has been disrupted, many of our notions of progress, growth, and improvement have also been challenged. Our expectations for how much change should happen in two years--the plans we had for where we would be by 2022--likely don’t line up with where we find ourselves as 2021 draws to a close.
When I read the psalm from today’s lectionary, I feel a now familiar sense of temporal uncertainty and mixed-up timelines. Psalm 126 begins with a celebration of God’s freeing power in the lives of the Israelites, and an expression of gratitude for what God has already done. But then the last three verses seem to be asking for the very thing that is celebrated in the first three verses. So which is it? Has restoration already happened? Are the Israelites still waiting for rescue? Is it both?
In my own life, and in the world around me, it’s always both. I see redemption and restoration, and yet I am in need of more. On any given day, as I navigate my particular story of growth and grief and receiving and losing, I may find myself with laughter on my lips, or I might feel solidarity with those who are sowing in tears.
In these dusky days of late fall, Psalm 126 provides me with a sense of solace. When timelines are disrupted so that we do not know how long or how short a year might be, when we wait and wonder when our fortunes* may be restored, when we can remember the good that God has done and yet so acutely feel our need of God’s intervention--we are not alone.
Across time, across history, we wait with the whole communion of saints. We do not wait alone, even in the darkest nights.
Whether time feels fast or short for you right now, whether you are celebrating God’s restoration or pleading for sorrow to turn to joy, may this Advent season be a space where the tension of time and our ideas of linear progression are laid to rest. May we find solidarity in the relationships that surround us, connection to those who have gone before us, hope in the stories of God’s faithful work in the world around us, and love undergirding it all.
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