Often, while we are waiting, our mind is fixated on that moment in the future when the waiting is over. When you’re expecting a child, you spend hours daydreaming about seeing them face to face for the first time. If your spouse had some tissue removed to be biopsied, you just want to get to that moment when the results are in and the waiting is over. Refugees who have languished for years in camps long for the day that they receive the news of where their new home will be. We want the days to pass quickly. We want to rid ourselves of the anxiety of waiting and the feeling of helplessness.
Day 8. Making home
Advent is a season of waiting, anticipating the coming of the Messiah and preparing ourselves to celebrate God’s presence among us. Probably because of my recent move to Texas, this year I find myself focusing on that last part: When will God make his home with us?
Since leaving my childhood home, I have lived in three different states, even another country. Every time I moved, whether for school or work, I had to start over. After each move, I hoped and waited for the time each new place would become home. At the same time, I mourned the loss of my old home, wondering when I would get to return. Even now I hope and wait and mourn.
Day 7. Beauty and salvation
My friend Eric fled West Africa to relocate to South Africa. Eric loves music and one of his favorite songs is called "Africa" by Toto. One day I asked Eric why he loved this song so much. He explained that the woman they are talking about in the song was to him a metaphor of his home being a distraction and the rest of Africa the place where he will find more beauty and salvation.
Day 6. How long, O Lord?
The immigrant experience is of course diverse but one theme that I have seen firsthand in my own network is that of waiting on the American immigration system. Two of my friends from church got married, Ashley* was documented and Mike* wasn’t. They had a beautiful wedding and they purchased their first home together.
Day 5. I thought that I understood
Day 4. Wisdom calling out in the city
Day 3. Deliverance in desperate times
Day 2. Translation
We often view prayer as just the talking we do with God. It's that time we carve out, wherever it is during our day, that we talk to God as we need, drawing closer to the Divine in the process. Prayer is doing, prayer is saying. Or so we think. We don't often see prayer as those times in our lives when we don't know what to say to God, the Holy Spirit taking over in ways we don't understand. We don't often see prayer as that time when the silence between you and God is deafening, causing you to wonder if God is there. We don't often see prayer as listening being placed above talking, as consistently waiting on God in our lives. But it is.
Day 1. She never came home that day
I have spent many days going for walks with my friend, a friend who had fled the Congo in the hope of creating a new life here in Houston. But there was one particular conversation that grabbed my heart.
We were walking along Gulfton Avenue on our way to the closest grocery store, when out of the blue he started...