Articles - From the Curate

We are at the beginning of the Church year, in the season of Advent, that time of watching and waiting for the light of Christ to come into our midst. It is also a time when we experience the pulls from our commercialised world to plug the gap of this waiting time with material goods and with pre Christmas feasting.

In one of his letters from prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer tells of his regret that we have become so 'matter of fact' that we have lost our sense of real yearning. Bonhoeffer writing of this impoverishment hankers once more for the enrichment gained through the deep pains of longing and yearning.

It is easy for some of us to forget that many still live with a sense of deep yearning. There are millions in the world who yearn for peace, for justice, for freedom from persecution. There are others who yearn for a time that was, for a situation to be different, for the burden of difficult personal circumstances to be lifted.

If in some way, through prayer or action, we can align ourselves with those who yearn, then perhaps we too will be led to that place of longing for salvation. We might through our solidarity with those who can only wait, find within ourselves those cries of Advent, for God to come and set us free.

And perhaps when we know again in some small measure that sense of yearning, we will understand a little better the heart of our God, the one who so deeply yearns for us, that he emptied himself of glory and became like us.

May the blessings of the Christ child this Christmas be God's response to your Advent cries.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay