Malachi 3:1-4,23-24
Luke 1:57-66
‘And the Lord you are seeking will suddenly enter his Temple; and the angel of the covenant who you are longing for, yes, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.’
In today’s reading from the prophet Malachi there are two words which always stand out for me: ‘seeking’ and ‘longing’. These words are firmly part of our Advent vocabulary. We have met them in our Scripture readings and hymns. Through the centuries Christian writers have explored the theme of longing for God. I have found myself reminiscing about my childhood and the special times of longing for birthdays, holidays, the arrival of my grandparents from Denmark. Nothing as an adult seems quite to equal the build up of excitement that I experienced as a child.
In her book, The Coming of God, Maria Boulding osb, captures beautifully the longing that is in every human heart:
‘… the work of grace is going on in you through the whole business of living, to hollow you out, to make you Capax Dei as the old mystics used to say, able to receive God. You yourself are the place of desire and need. All your love, your stretching out, your hope, your thirst, God is creating in you so that he may fill you. It is not your desire that makes it happen but his. He longs through your heart. Your insufficiency and your forgetting to long for him are no barrier. In your prayer God is seeking you and himself creating the prayer; he is on the inside of the longing.’
The Gospel text from Luke 1:57-66 today tells of the birth of John the Baptist and his naming.
The time came for Elizabeth to have her child, and she gave birth to a son; and when her neighbours and relations heard that the Lord had shown her so great a kindness, they shared her joy.
Here Luke expresses a joy that I can easily relate to. Shared good news brings a blessing that ripples out to all who hear it. This joy is possible because Elizabeth and Zechariah are both people who have walked faithfully in God’s ways and been humble enough to make space for God.
How can you make space for God today?