Friday Focus: A Reflection for the Third Sunday of Advent

Said the night wind to the little lamb, Do you hear what I hear? Way up in the sky, little lamb, Do you hear what I hear?   I can’t remember when I first heard it, but Advent and Christmas would somehow not be the same if I could not experience the warm and sentimental carol “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The carol continues with all manner of questions about what possibly could be heard in this season of expectation and wonder.  It ends, however, with an affirmation about the coming of the Christ child.  With broad chords and all voices singing in parts accompanied by full organ, the carol affirms in an explosion of confidence, “He will bring us goodness and light!” Could it that on this Rose Sunday we might hear and see the witness of grace among us?  I suppose that any time is a good time to have grace re-kindled in our lives, but perhaps Advent is the season of seasons for such moments.  Perhaps those blind to reconciliation might once again see the energy and healing that comes when grace gives us the ability to let go of the grudge or wave “goodbye” to the hurt.  Maybe right now is a Kingdom-coming moment when the lameness of cynicism might be transformed into the wonder of hope.  Could it be that God’s Kingdom might surely come in your life and mine if we heard and saw the Gospel changing our attitudes of fear and death into expectations of confidence and life? What do you hear and see?  I want you to believe with me today that the promises of the prophets and even the hope of old John the Baptist is still very much evident in the work and person of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He is not only the Coming One, he is the Present One through whose grace and love, life, passion, death, and resurrection we all finally hear and see who we are and what God so longs to make of us.  That is exactly what this season of anticipation and preparation is all about!  The beautiful decorations, evergreen smells, warm music, and bold pageantry of this holy season are all conspiring to put you and me in a place where we can hear and see ourselves as God sees us: created in God’s image, beloved of God from before the heavens existed, wanted by God now and always as God’s children. So in these waning moments of Advent with but 10 days until Christmas, what do you hear and see?