By Amy Butler
Desolation. Dry, unyielding, lifeless, dark. Wind whistles through what was abandoned, echoes of emptiness filling the silence. No water runs here, no urgent life pushing up through cracks in the pavement. Just dry, empty, dead landscape, scorched earth where the memory of smoke lingers on the wind.
When you arrived, the barren wasteland threatened to swallow you alive. Smoke burned your nostrils and thirst parched your lips; dust stung your eyes while the hard earth resisted progress, unyielding under your feet. There was no shelter anywhere you looked. Shadows were long and dark and heavy. For longer than you can allow yourself to remember, you wandered here, crying tears of grief and pain, regret and fear. You didn’t know your way; you couldn’t see a home; your heart echoed the anguished question of the Psalmist: “I lift my eyes to the mountains, where does my help come from?”
But you lived.
You lived, and you found, somehow, enough sustenance in the scorched place. Desolation became strangely familiar. Slowly but surely you marked paths through what was once baffling wilderness. You discovered unlikely places of nourishment. From the most unexpected and unanticipated sources, shelter materialized. Your eyes and even your heart, some days, found almost a comfort in the scorched place.
Lately, though, you’ve begun to notice that the view from the scorched place seems to be shifting. When you can manage to lift your eyes, the landscape ahead appears different than the scorched place all around you. Far off, up on the edge of what you can just make out, it seems there are hints of green, scents and sounds of water and life, and maybe even fragrant bursts of color. You can’t be absolutely sure, but there’s no doubt that something ahead is different. And beneath your feet, if you look carefully, a pathway away from the scorched place toward this new place seems to be emerging right before you.
Maybe the path was there all along but you never saw it.
Maybe brand new life, possibility that was never there before at all, is being born right in front of your weary, salt-sore eyes.
However the path emerged, it is the way of hope — hope that the scorched, barren earth is not the only place you’ll be forever. It is the unbelievable possibility that newness and life and promise and joy might actually become more than far-off dreams. You can barely dare to ask: Might they even become themes to accompany a life that was for so long lived to the dark music of desperation and fear and hopelessness?
There’s no doubt: The path is there. But by now the scorched place has begun to feel comfortable. It’s not beautiful, but you know your way around. What might happen if you took a step or two down the path ahead? What if you walked toward wonder and life and possibility? You can already see that the landscape off in the distance is wildly different from the place you know. What if you stumble — fall, even? You might lose your way, because the new place is so unfamiliar and you’ve never, ever, been there before. And the sustenance up ahead — it’s there in abundance; you can see it clear as day. But what if you get there and find it’s just too completely different than anything you’ve ever experienced before?
This place where you find yourself — right along the edge of what you know and what is frighteningly unknown; settled in the dark, scorched place but looking with longing toward the light ahead — this is the place called Advent.
Whatever brought you to the scorched place, you came here “to find my peace, and grieve no more, to heal this place inside my heart….”
Up ahead everything changes, but the possibility of joy looms large: “My soul was lost, but here I am, so this must be amazing grace.”
Right up ahead of you, on the edge of everything: Advent.
Now, step toward it.