Rachel Ringenberg Miller is pastor at Shalom Mennonite Church, Newton, Kansas.
“For the tyrant shall be no more, and the scoffer shall cease to be; all those alert to do evil shall be cut off— those who cause a person to lose a lawsuit, who set a trap for the arbiter in the gate, and without grounds deny justice to the one in the right.” Isaiah 29:20-21
I find these words from Isaiah 29 disturbing. I find it so, because what was hoped for by Isaiah is still hoped for. Nothing has changed it seems since Isaiah first spoke these words. There are still tyrants, bullies, people who manipulate the system and who exercise a considerable amount of power in inhumane ways.
We still live in a world where justice is denied. It’s disturbing and it’s depressing.
Yet, maybe acknowledging this reality, that nothing has changed all that much, is what we need to do during this time of Advent.
We are about halfway through Advent. December 25th is 13 days from now. I vacillate between feeling like everything will work itself out to feeling utterly overwhelmed at this point of the season (work itself out meaning worship services, a child’s birthday, holiday shopping and travel will all go smoothly). I fear that all those things I mentioned in the parenthesis will be failures.
In the end, the outcome of all that goes on in these next 13 days will be some combination of successes and failures. I am hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. I’m in the middle and the middle is a hard place to be.
The middle cannot be avoided. All stories contain a beginning, middle and end. It seems to me that not only are we in the middle of the Advent season, but we are also living in the middle as Jesus followers.
We are in the middle, yet we are bookended by hope.
God has fulfilled the promises that God made in the past, this is one of the bookends of hope. Isaiah alludes to this when he says in 29:22, “Therefore thus says the Lord, who redeemed Abraham.” God made a promise to Abraham. A promise that through his and Sarah’s descendants the world would be blessed. Through this promise came the formation of a people who desired to follow God, a people Jesus would be born into, and through Jesus, the love of God would be extended. God has kept God’s promises.
And God will keep promises. The other bookend of hope is the promise of the future when all creation is at peace. Isaiah points to the future hope of when when tyrants and scoffers will cease to be.
But we aren’t there yet. We are in the middle. As I reflect on faith and life in the middle, I’m starting to think the middle is where the complexity of faithfulness is played out. The middle determines what happens next.
I hope we allow ourselves to be fully submerged in the struggle that is the middle of Advent. I hope this for us because the middle is where our faith is built.
Here is a blessing for us to carry through living in the middle:
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