Advent and Hymnology - Waiting and Praying with Faithful Impatience.

Earth was waiting, spent and restless,

with a mingled hope and fear;

and the faithful few were sighing,

'Surely, Lord, the day is near;

the desire of all the nations.

it is time he should appear.'

 

In an impatient age, this Advent hymn describes the exhaustion of the long wait. God's promises and purposes can't be hurried by any Amazon Prime type subscription! 'Get it tomorrow' is one of the liturgical Hallelujahs of a culture seeking to eliminate waiting. But God isn't so easily co-opted to serve our lust for immediacy.

 

And yet. 'Surely, Lord, the day is near...' In our prayers during Advent, we try to put the world's longings and anguish into words, thoughts, and the cries of the human heart, and to hear the cry of the whole Creation.

 

The mission of the Advent Church, therefore, must include prayers, always faithful and sometimes impatient, that the desire of all the nations for peace and justice will find their fulfilment in the coming of God in Christ. Intercession and loving action for a suffering world is the affective fulcrum of the Church's mission, the call of the Advent God that we be more concerned about the longings of a broken Creation than the Church's own self-survival.

 

The author of 'Earth was waiting' also wrote 'Immortal, Invisible, God only wise'. William Chalmers Smith was born in Aberdeen, became a Free Church of Scotland minister and in 1893 became Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland. Amongst other reasons to admire W. C. Smith was his defence of Professor William Robertson Smith during his trials by the Free Church for his advanced views on biblical criticism.

 

(The photo shows the side of Westhill Community Church - the juxtaposition of the Cross and the power pylon is a visual parable...I think )