Advent: the Arrival

I am sitting in the silence of sorrow.

Is there more than usual

or is suffering more pronounced because it’s Christmas?

We work intensely to make everything perfect

                  beautiful, light-filled

                  joyful, echoing with music

               buying and wrapping the perfect gift

                  to show our love to all

exhausting ourselves with doing, being, attending

in an attempt to create heaven on earth.

It always fails—

has to fail—

because the Perfect gift has already come

and we await His return to complete the perfection

we’re trying to create on our own.

That doesn’t keep us from attempting it, though,

to orchestrate the holy

                  the happy

                  the fa-la-la-la-la

                  joy to the world

                  cinnamon and pine

                  fresh-baked bread smell of joy.

But it never works

and we never learn.

Serious cancer appears

addiction rears its head

dysfunction increases

grown children come “home” yet

                  don’t go visit their mothers

husbands and wives plan to divorce

                  or live together in silence

shooters stalk schools and kill the innocent.

Amidst all our frantic efforts

to make it “the most wonderful time of the year”

we forget the message in the manger

God drawing near to share our pain

to walk in our footsteps

and to bring hope through dying

with the promise that one day

                  —One Day—

all will be right

all will be made new

everything false turned true

and it will have nothing to do with tinsel.