Seeker

What are you waiting for? Much of life is spent waiting: Waiting in a check-out or check-in queue.  Waiting for a delivery.  Waiting for a response to a call, email or text. Waiting for a bus or train. Waiting for the car to be fixed. Waiting for someone to do what they promised. Waiting for someone to leave or someone to arrive. Waiting for justice. Waiting for pain to end, sickness to pass. Waiting for a war to be over. Waiting for an expected birth or death... You can go on. I won't. What are you waiting for? Waiting is a recurring theme in Advent, the four weeks of preparation before Christmas. Advent waiting is a particular sort of waiting. It may be silent or noisy, calm or exciting, but never passive. It isn't waiting for Christmas. It's more like looking forward and preparing for a guest. This guest has promised to come but doesn't say when. This Guest is so much more than an ordinary guest. This Guest comes in ordinary ...

Advent begins next Sunday. What? Already? where did the last year go? The trouble with Advent is that it rushes at me and by me too quickly. It can be hard to make best use of it in a 'watching' and 'waiting' sort of way. Perhaps it is the same for you? I've found that planning ahead can help. It seems odd to think about preparing for Advent, when Advent itself is a preparation season. On the other hand when I don't plan to prepare I don't prepare well. If you are wondering how to take a few regular quiet moments for prayer or reflection during Advent, here are a few suggestions to choose from: Dreaming of a "White Christmas"? Why not dream of a green one instead? Better still - do something about it. A Rocha has an  online Advent Calendar 2014  with daily "life-altering tips and ideas for a greener Christmas and beyond" .  Jon Kuhrt has a simple Advent Challenge to use between 1st and 24th December. The idea is to set aside...

Where is God? People sometimes ask that question when bad things happen. The underlying question is 'why doesn't God do something to stop it?' I think that's a question that never has a fully satisfactory answer. I tried and failed in 'Bird-watcher sets cat among pigeons' among other posts about suffering. The best I can do is to find ways to live with the question,with all its accompanying tensions and paradoxes. This post is about 'where is God?' That's also a hard question to answer, unless your god is one you have managed to neatly package to fit in your pocket. In which case, to use John Bertram Phillips' term, 'Your God is too small'. Where is God? At its simplest, that question may be posed by a child or someone expecting a literalistic answer, as if God is only located in a particular place, like 'in heaven'. When one of our children was about 4 he wondered about the idea of God being everywhere and wanted...