An Expectant Pause

During Advent I am reading backwards through Luke and so yesterday I started with the resurrection. It is a strange way to journey - starting from the glory of resurrection, ending with the beginning, but I am hoping that I might gain new insight into the story of Jesus' life, a story that I have read over and over, yet  continues to speak to me in new ways. Yesterday it was even stranger to read of resurrection and then preach of conception, and perhaps this strangeness in journey contributed to me eating pudding before main as I snuggled up on my sofa under the lights of the Christmas tree to a cheesy Christmas film (the proper way to end the first Sunday of Advent). 

The last four verses of Luke are full of promise. They are full of pause. They are an insight into a moment before the what next. They give a prequel of Luke's next book (Acts) and give a hint of what is to come, but they don't go further than an earth to heaven pause in the proceedings of the story of the people of God as Jesus is taken up into heaven. An expectant pause that is full of joy and praise because the promise of the next has become certain. It's a very advent end to the Gospel.

The season of advent for me is a reminder that waiting so often is inevitable. In a year where I have been learning to praise in the unknowing of a seemingly never-ending pause that has been longer than I expected it to be, advent waiting feels a bit different this year. 

The season of advent has always been for me a reminder that in the inevitable waiting there is expectation -  a glimmer, a thrill of hope, however weary the world feels right now. And that glimmer, it is there at the end of Luke, and I wonder if for the disciples, this made the praise in the waiting come more naturally. 

Yesterday there was a moment at the end of the service when I saw the face of a woman light up with twinkly joy. I had given the members of the congregation a tiny little ball and had instructed them to wait before they discovered what that ball was. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the woman who was so excited to find out what it was she removed the piece of white plastic from inside it before I told her to, and as the ball started to light up and twinkle, the joy spread along the row as the unexpected was discovered. On talking to the woman afterwards I found out that that little tiny twinkly light was a sign for her of what was to come after a difficult season. Her delight in God's goodness was infectious, and helped me to remember that even in the longest of pauses, there is always a hope ahead and a cause to praise.

In the little tiny twinkling lights of advent, in the frustration of the pause that is far longer than you anticipated, may you discover hope where you never expected hope to be.   

 "I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." Luke 24:48