For the vision is yet for the appointed time;
It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
For it will certainly come, it will not delay.
~ Book of Habakkuk, Chapter Two & Verse Three

I am angry. Just plain angry. Fired up. Frustrated. With my unfinished self. With rude people. With the mad, mad, mad world.

And I’m weary. Weary. Beaten. Breathless. With worry. With the fight for justice. With battles that appear un-win-able.

I’m sad, too. Sad. Broken. Gut-wrenched. At the oppression in my soul. In beloved ones. In a harsh and inhumane humanity.

It seems the opposite of what I should feel this Christmasy time of year. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, after all. But I think I will embrace the reminder of crushed spirits, smoldering wicks, our great and wild need, and my fatal cut. I need to hold my breath in for a moment, hold my breath with the whole of creation, with universes, galaxies, suns, oceans, mountains, birds, trees and man.

Hold my breath. Because that is what we, all of us – stars, turtles and fetuses – are doing whether we know it or not. And we’re holding our hopeless breath for Him, for the completion of what He brought with His birth: the hope of an appointed time when all weakness and failing, striving and death will be fully redeemed.

But, for now, we are in a room where we wait – sometimes angry, weary and sad – knowing that this is the moment before the extraordinary thing will come to pass. And, as Buechner says it, the name of that moment is Advent.