Soon, oh soon the light

 

Listen should we fight forever

Knowing as we do know Fear destroys?...

 …The fist will run

 Grasp metal to gun

The spirit sings in crashing tones we gain the battle drum

Our cries will shrill the air will moan and crash into the dawn

The pen won't stay the demon's wings, the hour approaches

Pounding out the Devil's sermon…

 

…Soon oh soon the light

Pass within and soothe this endless night

And wait here for you

Our reason to be here’

 [From ‘The Gates of Delirium’ by Yes, from their 1974 album, ‘Relayer’]

 

Sometimes it hurts.

Sometimes it really hurts.

I feel it like a constant ache inside.

A friend or loved one seems to be struck time after time with some disaster, setback, injustice, or illness. And I feel the pain inside.

I look at a church which, in our nation at least (although not worldwide) is seemingly in unending decline, struggling to know how to respond (and so often making panic decisions that only serve – so it seems to me – to make matters worse). I sometimes despair. And it hurts.

And perhaps it hurts most when I read about the climate crisis, and our apparent inability to take the hard decisions, or to do so sufficiently quickly or fully, or when I think about the horror of the fighting and killing, the misery and suffering in Israel-Palestine, or the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Yes, there is a real ache inside.

How long?

How long must all of this go on?

How long until it ends?

How long until God responds to our prayers?

How long until his Kingdom of peace and justice, ruled by love, is finally established?

I genuinely do feel all of this as an inner ache sometimes. And, as well as the pain, I get angry, sometimes so very angry, with God. I am comforted to know that I am not alone in this… and even in the Bible there is anger with God.

Perhaps this ache within is part of why I feel so drawn to this season of Advent, which brings together the mysteries of suffering and hope, of anger and faith, of darkness and light, of God’s here-and-now Kingdom and his not-yet-here Kingdom.

During this Advent time we sing the hymns that express all of this: ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’, ‘Come, thought long expected Jesus’, and so on.

The progressive rock group, Yes, whom I have often quoted, frequently touch on ‘spiritual’ themes in their work. This past week, something brought to my mind the piece which I have quoted above; ‘The Gates of Delirium’. It is a 22 minute long song (or, perhaps better, a suite) that is inspired by ‘War and Peace’.

The opening sections are a frantic and confused depiction of war. Then, towards the end, the clamour and chaos give way to a gentle, hopeful, yearning section… almost like a prayer; ‘Soon oh soon the light, Pass within and soothe this endless night, And wait here for you, Our reason to be here’.

I almost want to say ‘Amen’.

Yes, I believe that the day will come; the Day of the Lord. I have a firm hope in God’s promises, and that his Kingdom of justice and peace will one day be established. ‘Thy Kingdom Come’.

But I pray that it will be soon, that the light will dispel the dreadful darkness, that God’s will and way will finally prevail.

And, until then, I guess I will continue to live with this ache within.

‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’.

December Snow

 

‘Like December snow, that lays in the wood

You're gone too soon...life can be like December snow’

‘December Snow’ by the Moody Blues

 

Well, here we are, and another Advent dawns; the start of the new Christian Year, and the beginning of our movement towards Christmas.

And yesterday the snow came.

Where we live, it came in abundance!

As I began to write this, the car is still to be dug out of the driveway.

My family know all too well that I have a very ambivalent feeling about snow. Actually, to be completely honest, they think that I have a completely negative view of snow! But, that is not actually true. If I have nowhere to go and nothing to do, there is nothing I love more than watching from my cosy sitting room as the snow falls. I have even been known to enjoy venturing out into the snow on foot (suitable clad, of course) and trudging through the deep drifts or throwing snowballs.

The problem is that mostly I have (or – at least – have had in the past) places to go, people to see, things to do, and so on. In such circumstances, snow is completely disruptive, dangerous, unnerving and unwelcome. As you may, by now, have gathered, I am not ‘Dreaming of a White Christmas’!

The Moody Blues song (quoted above) suggests that December snow can be gone too soon. But, in my view, too often it is not gone soon enough!

But, it depends on so much. It depends on perspective and circumstance.

My wife, Jane, loves the snow. Her spirits lift when the snow falls. A few years back, when it snowed and everything around looked lovely, she posted on Facebook, ‘I love when the snow falls, does that make me a bad person?’. Of the replies to her post, exactly 21 people said ‘Yes’ and exactly 21 said ‘No’!

I guess the truth is that there are two sides to the snow. It can indeed be beautiful, evocative, and ‘magical’. It can also be disruptive, disabling, and even dangerous.

And it seems to me that there are also two sides to this Advent Season. Of course, it is when we begin to look ahead to Christmas and anticipate the celebration of Jesus birth. But it is also a season of waiting and of ‘not yet’. Hope on the one hand, and delay on the other. The joy and peace is tempered by the awareness that the coming of God’s Kingdom in all its fulness is not yet. We sing of peace but we still are so acutely aware of so much conflict in our world (even, at this time, in that very land in which our Saviour was born). We talk of joy, but we know that there are many who are so weighed down with despair, anxiety, dread, illness or loss.

God’s Kingdom is not yet here.

Advent has (as it were) a ‘dark side’, which is why traditionally such things as death, judgement heaven, and hell are themes for this season. Doesn’t sound very Christmassy, does it? But that is one of the reasons I would like the church to be more focussed than it often seems to be, on holding off on the Christmas Carols etc during this season. By all means, once Christmas comes, let us sing them with joy and delight, and continue to do so for the 12 days of Christmas that begin on 25^th December.

But there is a place for acknowledging the dark realities of our world and our lives, and for affirming that God’s Kingdom that has come, and keeps coming, is nonetheless still to come in fulness.

This does not mean that we fail to anticipate Christmas, still less refuse to share in the joy and celebration that is around. But, just like snow, there is another side to it.

And, I suppose, this is why in this season, I tend – both in my own devotions and in public worship – to focus on the three themes of hope, waiting, and patience.