Advent Lament

 November 28, 2022

I read this Advent devotional from Ann Voskamp this morning. Maybe it will speak to you as it does to me.

The Laments of Advent:

When It Doesn’t Feel Like the Light’s Coming Fast Enough

Maybe you’ve felt that way. You’re in a dark place; your prayers seem to bounce back at you from the ceiling. You long for light that doesn’t come. 

You can’t make light. All real light really isn’t from here — all real light comes from beyond this world. Real light is not mined from somewhere in the depths of this rock spinning in a dark cosmos, nor real light grown in trees on some remote mountain slope. All light comes from beyond this world and we will have to wait for the light to come.

 

All light always involves waiting…

All the light we see out the window’s been traveling 300,000 km a second, for the last 480 seconds — more than 8 whole minutes since this light left the sun — before it’s finally reached my eye, warmed my feet, twice as long as it takes to steep the cup of coffee in my hand.

 

All light has always made a journey. And every moment of our existence, since our first breath, we’ve always waited for the light to come.

 

We can dare to trust: The light is coming, and light’s literally the very fastest thing in the universe. Nothing has ever travelled as fast as light, and nothing has ever come for you as fast as light. More than 186,000 miles per second — just to get to you, warm you, envelope you, revive you!

Is the Light really coming when we’re all living with broken hearts and busted relationships, when time’s ticking loud and parts of our hearts have soundlessly detonated, when lament is the dialect of every honest Advent?

Is there actually more light here than we can ever even see? Most visible light isn’t most of the light. Nearly all of the light is the light you can’t see. Even when you can’t see the Light, there’s infinite more light right here. They say that the human eye can only observe 0.0035 percent of electromagnetic spectrum. “The light we can see, made up of the individual colors of the rainbow, represents only a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Other types of light include radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, ultraviolet rays, X-rays and gamma rays —”all are imperceptible to human eyes.”

Most visible light isn’t most of the light.

Nearly all of the light is the light you can’t see.

I read these words and began to think about how little we actually see of all that actually is. We beg for relief from the pain that circumscribes our world. It’s all we can see, but there is always more. But we often must wait. Because light doesn’t come from within, we must wait for it to arrive. So tonight as I sit in the artificial light of the lamp by my chair, I watch the light outside fade to black, knowing I cannot rush the morning. The light is coming, and will arrive when this longitude in its turning once more faces the sun. And in my heart and in my prayers, I turn to face the Sun of Righteousness who arises with healing in his wings (Malachi 4:2).