Words of Reflection
Christmas is just around the corner. Our Advent journey is almost over.
For us, Advent is a fixed season with finite dates and a known resolution on a particular day, and in that specific sense we can never fully enter into the mindset of God’s people who lived prior to the incarnation. Those who listened to the word of the prophets and held on to the promises of God only knew the day was coming, but they didn’t know when. They had no date circled, no liturgical calendar to guide them.
They had only hope, but that was enough.
But surely there were days when that hope was hard to find. In the centuries between the Old and New Testaments, the people of God experienced hardship, war, oppression, and disaster in unimaginable ways. With each passing generation the promises may have seemed a bit further off, a bit harder to see and believe. And yet they labored on.
But surely there were days when it seemed their labor was in vain. Surely at times the sheer effort required to hold on to hope seemed overwhelming. In that regard we can still identify with them, because while we know when Christmas arrives, we also know that Christmas is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of the end. We, too, look to an unknown date in the future when God will once again “rend the heavens and come down” (Is. 64:1) to set things right for all eternity. For that event we, too, have no date circled, no liturgical calendar to guide us.
But we have hope, and that is enough.
Still…what do we do when hope is hard to find, when we feel our labor is in vain, when the effort to hold on overwhelms us? On those days we need more than ever to cling to what the incarnation declares: that we are not alone, that we belong to the God who has called us, who has redeemed us and sealed us with the gift of the Holy Spirit. The God who demonstrated his faithfulness in Christ’s first Advent will sustain his people until the second, because he is with us and has called us by name.
Our labor is not in vain.
Scripture for Meditation:
“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
—Isaiah 43:1-2 (NRSVUE)
“Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
—1 Corinthians 15:58 (NRSVUE)
Song: Your Labor is Not in Vain (lyrics here)
