I was early
for worship and I was a little down that morning. I trudged in to find my seat
and noticed the choir practising for Advent. Suddenly they burst out with, “Jesus is coming. O yes I know!” with
such vim and confidence that my spirits shot up like a dog stung by an ant.
It’s been a
difficult year for so many of us in so many different ways. Changes come our
way whether we will them or not. Our lifestyles are reduced by the downsizing
of our lives and we grieve for what we had and what we could do.
The news
outside puts our little crises back into the first world bracket. Whoever first
wrote, and I suspect the prophet Joel, “There shall be blood and fire. The sun
shall not give off its light and the moon shall turn to blood” seems to be
referring to the morning Al Jazeera news on SBS each time I turn it on. If you
want to know what I pray during the news, the prayers are laments and
intercessions as the common people suffer while their leaders muddle. How long,
O Lord, how long, my insides wail silently.
“Jesus
is coming. O yes I know!” Whatever
is happening to each of us and all of us anywhere, we can now sing this
affirmation as the budding agapanthus outside ushers in Advent joining with the
already ubiquitous jacaranda. In fact, throughout this spring the flowers in
their diverse harmony of colour speak the colours of the rainbow to us when our
spirits descend into grey.
Living in
Arrunga among the aches and pains of looming age, I can look out on the rose
bed where the carefully tended square garden of roses still flaunts its living
beauty. On the way into RNSH for my haemodialysis, we pass garden after garden
in the streets of bouganvillia with a glimpse of Illawarra flame tree and
liquid amber with the emerging Christmas bush. Each in its own way and from its
own place, they cry peace through beauty and hope after winter.
I can’t help
noticing the landscape of most of these places wrecked by conflict, covered
with stones, rubble, and dust, the only colour being the clothing of survivors
fleeing to God knows where, crying for help from God knows whom.
“Jesus
is coming. O yes I know!” We hear these words ringing in our
ears and in our hearts even from the colour in the flowers around us. Would
that we could send all these colours to those for whom their environment for
the forseeable future is the greyness of endless dust. How will they know the
hope we can now sing? Well, we have the Christmas giving tree, the Uniting
World giving scheme, and our Christmas Bowl, plus many other opportunities to
send hope somewhere that needs to hear what our choir sings to us.
Forget those
congested shops encouraging children to visit “Satan” as one typo affected
blurb put it and to buy one of those floor sized lime green and purple plastic
pencil-sharpeners on special. Bethlehem sends out a quieter but longer lasting
gift to all the world in all its wretchedness, one who brings beauty and colour
and peace more reliable than whatever we can anxiously muster.
“Jesus
is coming. O yes I know!”
