"What happens when God comes close?"

Today is the last day in the church year...a veritable New Year's Eve for liturgical Christians. Many of us are preparing for Advent, four weeks of waiting and watching, wondering and preparing for the Coming of Christ in a new and different way. This year my church is intentionally trying to keep from falling into early Christmas celebration and instead marking the season of Advent with reverence and conscientious preparation. I have been struggling with how exactly to do that, and then this song came into my email this morning.

With a tone of questioning, it fit perfectly with what I was wondering. And so I will begin Advent with the conviction that "Only heaven knows what happens when God comes close." This season will be one of waiting, yearning, preparing and hoping that I will be the better for it when on Christmas Day I celebrate the birth of Christ again for the first time and perhaps yet another version of the Second Coming!

LISTEN: “When God Comes Close” by Tara Ward of Church of the Beloved, on Adventus (2010) https://open.spotify.com/track/5jITG6BdgPbySGEtBKIjBS?si=555b56fd72c045a3 We wait, we hope We yearn, prepare For who or how or what or where? Maybe the changing of the tide Maybe the turning of someone’s eye Maybe the falling of the snow Only heaven knows What happens when God comes close We wait, we hope We yearn, prepare For who or how or what or where? Maybe the healing of a heart Maybe reunion of a drift apart Maybe a child’s coming home Only heaven knows What happens when God comes close We wait, we hope We yearn, prepare For who or how or what or where? Maybe the song, a place to belong Maybe some faith, just a touch of grace Maybe love, it’s rarely what we think of Only heaven knows What happens when God comes close.