Empty Chairs

These are good times, though they are tiring.

And now I sit alone in my room, my only company being the two empty chairs of my roommates. I love these moments of solitude. Much can be learned from an empty chair. We remember the friends and family which have filled the empty seat before, and we remember those that are no longer with us. In tribute to them we endeavor to always keep enough room for one more to join us in our struggle homeward. And lastly, an empty chair can teach us to be willing to lose, because life is momentary, fragile and unsure, and people come into our lives and leave again in a moment.

Perhaps what we don’t realize is that squandering is a doorway through which God enters in. we are guilty of “dolling out” our love and care because it is so immediately satisfying, but slowly we exhaust our hoarded resources and have failed to fill them because we felt no need to. There is a relief in coming to the reality that Jesus is not only all we need, Jesus is all we have.

I’m going to try and post some prayers and thoughts about advent in the next several weeks because, to be honest, I feel like I’m missing it in the blur. I am failing to sense the stillness of the eternal in the chaos of the hours. This prayer is written by Walter Brueggemann:

In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will.
And in this privileged place
we are surrounded by witnesses who yearn more than we do
and by those who despair more deeply than do we.
Look upon your church and its pastors
in this season of hope
which runs so quickly to fatigue
and this season of yearning
which becomes so easily quarrelsome.
Give us the grace and impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our finger tips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case
and make all things new.
Amen.

Give us the wherewithal to long though we are weary, to remember even when our minds feel numb. The gift of advent is so deep that we do not want to miss it; but many of us, myself included, are helpless to sense the joy of your presence. Come soon, Come here.