Advent 1

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. My plan during this season is to write a little each week about a different facet of what it means to me to wait for the coming of Christ, which is what we're doing during Advent—waiting for Christmas, for the birth of Jesus.

This week I feel moved to post the words to a song I wrote several years ago, while I was living in Salt Lake. I wrote it during Advent, drawing from passages in the Gospels and the Psalms. I'd been reflecting that season on the theme of waiting in the context of the latest round of anti-gay legislation in Utah (probably the adoption ban, if I'm remembering the timing correctly). Once again we'd seen equality deferred to the future, which was discouraging... and then it occurred to me. We were waiting. Waiting for justice and equity. Waiting for a transformation, an enlightenment, in public opinion around these issues. As the Latter-day Saints have been doing for 200 years, as Christians have been doing for 2000 years, we as gay/lesbian people and our straight friends are still waiting for the hoped-for day.

I may spend my whole life waiting. I hope not—God, I hope not. But I would hardly be the first person in the history of the world who waited his/her whole life for the coming of something that s/he didn't live to see come. I trust in God's promise of a regime that implements justice and equity; I have faith that the Spirit works through our efforts to build up that regime. But I may never enjoy the fruits. Or, then again, I might. I don't know. That's what it means to wait: to live in uncertainty. But a hopeful, confident uncertainty, if that makes any sense.

Advent reminds me that this hopeful, confident uncertainty is part of the Christian life. We wait for the fulfilment of the promises. We wait for Millennium. We wait for the Messiah.

So here's the song.

CHORUS:
Take ye heed, watch and pray,
for ye know not when the time is.
What I say unto you, I say unto all:
Let your lights burn, and watch.

1. O Lord, be gracious unto us;
we have waited for thee.
Be thou our arm every morning,
our salvation in the time of trouble.

2. I wait for the Lord;
in his word do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord
more than they that watch for the morning.

3. Rest, O rest, in the Lord
and wait patiently for him.
Fret not thyself because of those
that bring to pass wicked devices.