by Amanda Watson
“Remember, Advent is always –until the end of days.”
- Fr. Richard Rohr
How can we always be at the ready? We would be exhausted. Time spent doing rather than being.
But what if our traditional synonyms for Advent: aware, alive, attentive, alert, awake – become an image of one standing on tip-toe? Looking out into possibility, a possibility not of our own creation, but the possibility of God’s creation. A willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and all within a contentment that our source of satisfaction is beyond ourselves, beyond and dependent upon God, who is love. On tiptoe, ready and able to trust that Jesus will come again, just as HE has come into our past, into our private dilemmas, and into our suffering world. Looking out straining on our tiptoes to glimpse into all that wonder becomes a sort of a beginning, a whispering mantra “Come, Lord Jesus” not as a cry of desperation but an assuring shout of fierce and undeniable hope in God’s grace.
Standing on tiptoe is letting go of ourselves into the openness of the Holy Spirit. It is the assurance that “the Son of Man IS coming!” Standing on tiptoe is looking into the eyes of John the Baptist reminding us that losing self is filled with the God who gives life and gives abundantly.
My image would be a Norman Rockwell painting of a little girl in a thin, white dress flowing in the wind standing barefoot, on tiptoe to see over a wooden fence as one looking into the openness of all that lies ahead. A girl standing so tall on her tiptoes that she appears to be almost on the brink of jumping the fence to follow the wonder of God’s most incredible plan. There are valleys and mountaintops; there is darkness and light, but always there is God ever present filling the space with great beauty and glory.
“On tiptoe we stand, Lord Jesus
eagerly awaiting
your full revelation
always expecting you
to come some more.
…we stand
on tiptoe
Owning our kingdom-loving hearts
and our earth-eyes
We lean forward
and hope.”
by Macrina Wiederkehr
Together let us stand on tiptoe saying, “Come, Lord Jesus.”