St Paul tells us to wait, St Mark tells us to watch. But for what exactly?
Even Isaiah gets it wrong: “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for, such as they had not heard of from of old.” Surely Isaiah knew what Elijah had discovered – that God was not going to be found in the storm, or the fire, or the earthquake. The Messiah was going to come in the most unremarkable possible way – as just another baby born into poverty. As we know, two of the evangelists don’t even bother to mention the circumstances of Jesus’ arrival into this world.
I wonder if Isaiah was being ironic – putting into words what we want, just to point out how silly it was. He goes on to say “Would that you (God) might meet us doing right, that we were mindful of you in our ways!”. Isaiah tells us we are so messed up that it seems like God has abandoned us. So of course we cry out asking for grand gestures and world shattering events.
But God does not work like that. God doesn’t in fact work on the world at all – He works on us. If you have seen a potter at work you know that the clay gets a pretty good workout as it’s being shaped. Making a pot is not a gentle process – it requires force and precision.
Being pulled around by our potter God is not going to feel comfortable. We probably feel we have been pulled around a lot more than we would like in recent times. But we are now in the process, during our Advent season, of reminding ourselves that this God also came and lived with us, he experienced the difficulties of our lives. He is still with us, living through our difficulties with us. We don’t know how or when exactly this will happen – so we must stay awake, remain mindful at all times. We must always be open to the possibility of God.