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Poetry has the power to enable us to see what we already know in fresh and startling ways. On this first Sunday of Advent I reflect on the coming of Jesus through the words of R.S. Thomas (Welsh poet, 1913-2000) in his poem “The Coming.”

The Coming

And God held in his hand
A small globe.  Look, he said.
The son looked.  Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour.  The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
    On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky.  Many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs.  The son watched
Them.  Let me go there, he said.

Jesus, the very Word of God, you saw our wretched state, the power Sin had over us, our longing for rescue. And you said, “Let me go there.” It constricts my heart and fills my eyes to think of your compassion for a “scorched land” and for the people with “their thin arms” held out waiting. Such a picture of hopelessness that you broke into.

I’m waiting for your Advent, the celebration of your first one when you were born as a human baby, and your second one when you will appear again to complete what you started. I know so little, and I misunderstand so much. But I believe in you, Jesus. You revealed God to us, God embodied in time and space for us to see and follow.

In this Advent season of 2020 when we feel discouraged and hurting, please revive us to see you, to trust you, and to follow you in the work of the kingdom of God, to enter with you into the strongholds of evil and pull them down to the ground. We are waiting. Revive us.

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