Making Room

Advent reflections for a weary world

I wish I could say that when I hear God speaking to me, my immediate response is obedience. That’s not often the case. My Advent reading today included a poem by Madeline L’engle called, “Word”, and in it she writes,

The stilled voice learns

To hold it’s peace, to listen with the heart

To silence that is joy, is adoration.

The self is shattered, all words torn apart

In this strange patterned time of contemplation

That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,

And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.

(This is only an excerpt, I recommend you read the whole thing in the book, “Weather of the Heart”.)

This particular poem struck me because I’ve been thinking about how to make room for God in my own heart (always) but especially during this waiting season of Advent. I told a friend last week, for the sake of accountability, that I have sensed that I need to get offline for awhile. I need to make some room to hear God speak without Him having to compete with the voices of so many others—voices I love, voices I look for, voices that encourage and inspire me—and also distract me. (My screen time settings on my iPhone provide inarguable evidence to this end).

So here in this second week of Advent, I’m doing what I have done many times before, which is stepping away from social media for a season. For me, this is always a challenging act of surrender because fear always surrounds it. And yet, God is present in the face of this fear. In fact, He is speaking right to it.

Friday evening, as I was mulling over my decision to delete my social media apps from my phone for the next few weeks, I received an unsolicited private message from a friend. I say, “unsolicited'“ because I want to be clear that this wasn’t a reply to a conversation. It wasn’t even from someone I am in regular, daily communication with. It was, as Buechner might call it, “a message from the wings”, a non-coincidental Word from the Lord. Her note contained a number of encouraging statements, but the one that sent chills down my spine was this one line: “You are not hidden”.

She couldn’t have known it, but in the moments before her message arrived in my inbox, I was lamenting in prayer, my fears of going silent online for a while. I had confessed in my heart, only an hour before her message, how I always fear disappearing when I take breaks from regular engagement. It’s the fear of being unseen that so often undoes me. And then her words— “You are not hidden”.

And in that moment, I knew that God saw me. I knew that He was using her words to confirm what I already had sensed in my spirit. Indeed, His hand is outstretched before me, calling me away for awhile. How can I refuse?

The Truth is that we were made to be seen, but our desire must be rightly ordered. Being seen for our own satisfaction and notoriety is not what God is calling us to. His invitation for us to be a “city on a hill”, to become the “light of the world”, a people upon whom a great light has dawned (Isaiah 9:2) is not so that we can bask in the applause of man, but so that we can help others find the Light that has given us life.

The only way we can become a “city on a hill” is to allow God to design and build us according to His purpose. This work, I have discovered again and again, happens best when I am still enough to surrender to His process. It happens best, when I am not trying to use all of my words with all of the people.

Madeline’s poem reminded me this morning that the silence that I find so difficult, when I let it have it’s way, leaves me healed. Not because the silence has any real power, but because it’s in the quiet, hidden places that God speaks and we are able to listen—really listen.

If you connect with me regularly there, I hope you’ll stay in touch via email instead, just for a while. I look forward to returning to those little squares in the New Year.

I pray that your Advent season, and Christmas celebrations are rich with the glory and blessing of the unrelenting mercy of Christ. May the Light of His life shine on you and give you His peace.

Until the New Year,

With joy,

Kris

PS: I am trying out a different email service. I am still working out the kinks, and ask that you bear with me in the process. ;) Thanks for your grace!