Advent 5

Thursday, First Week of Advent
1 December 2022

Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?... Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin…Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.  (Matthew 6:25-34)

I have seen the business that God has given to mortals to be busied about. God has made everything appropriate to its time but has put the timeless into their hearts so they cannot find out, from beginning to end, the work which God has done. I recognized that there is nothing better than to rejoice and to do well during life. (Ecclesiastes 3:10-12)

Learn from the way the wild flowers grow

As I write this reflection, I look out at the snow-dusted mountains that now function as the backdrop of my daily life. Following graduation, everything around me has more or less changed on the surface. I’m in a new place and doing new things with new people. A lot of new. But whether or not you have also experienced a big transition recently, none of us are static beings. 
 
We are all ever-changing, whether we can always perceive it or not. Like wild flowers, we are subject to the external conditions in which we find ourselves, in response to which we experience cycles of growing, drooping, twisting, dancing, shriveling and then bursting back to life when the time comes. Can we trust in these cycles? 
 
When we do not feel as though we are blooming in full glory, when we feel shaken by the wind, we become fearful because our sense of control feels lost. This grasping for control seems to be the business that God has given people to be busied about. But as Jesus says, “tomorrow will take care of itself.” This is the gift of this life and, ultimately, what we celebrate each Advent season. 
 
During Advent, we rejoice. We rejoice in the knowing that there is divine love in this world, once made tangible through Jesus’s presence on Earth. We celebrate that God sent a light down from the Heavens to do right by us, God’s sacred creation, as it seemed that we were not managing so well on our own down here. The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are all shrouded in mystery. This kind of divine knowledge—the timeless stored deep within each of us, as it is phrased in Ecclesiastes—is just out of reach of what we can possibly hope to understand. Yet, so many of us believe. 
 
While we do not have the power in this lifetime to fully access the timeless that dwells in our hearts, what we are left with is a feeling that we cannot quite shake. Let us grab onto that feeling, that seed of faith, however nebulous it is, and from there we may just find some peace and some hope in what is greater than our individual human existence. 
 
Taking our cues from the wild flowers, we might trust in tomorrow and the cycles of this lifetime while we rejoice in the sacredness of our humanity and the promise of divine love that knows no bounds. 
 
Wishing you well,
Kate Biedermann ’22