Squinting

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised to hear me say how much I love being at the beach! I sometimes say that I’m confident God has called me to live at the beach, He just hasn’t made it affordable yet! I prefer the undeveloped beaches you can find in Florida’s so-called “forgotten coast.” Growing up, my family often vacationed at Edisto Island, off the coast of South Carolina and at the time, undeveloped and that has had a life-long impact on me.

There’s so much to see at the beach when the clutter of stuff humans make isn’t in the way. Among my favorite memories of life at the beach is standing on the shore on a bright sunny day, squinting to look at ships in the distance or dolphins feeding off shore. But to see those things, especially on a very bright day, you have to squint. However one of the problems with squinting is that it makes it difficult to see the stuff right around you.

Advent invites us to do some squinting – that’s the only way we can see into the future and celebrate in all that God has prepared for His creation when the Lord reappears in glory.  Scripture, of course is the lens through which we do the squinting. This past Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent, the New Year for Christians who choose to follow a calendar that reflects Scripture rather than the civil calendar the world uses. Among the great texts for the first Sunday of Advent this year were Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37.  Both of those texts offer all sorts of opportunities for those who take Jesus at His Word to do some squinting.

Mark has Jesus saying that a new world order has been inaugurated and that is as sure as leaves on a fig tree mean summer is about to come. If we believe that, then Jesus would have us live our lives in the context of being ready for what God is about to do. “Verily I say to you . . .” to use some of the best of language form the KJV.

But if you walk down the shore of the beach with both eyes in “squint formation” you’re likely to stumble over something. So the question for us as the New Year in the Christian calendar begins is to try and determine how we can anticipate the glory that is yet to be revealed while living faithfully in the present. Another way of asking that question would be to see to determine how we live in the “here and now” but not forget the “yet to come”?

It seems that Luke understood that as he wrote the exciting story of the early church in Acts. He is neither unaware of nor unconcerned about the fact that Jesus promised to return in glory. But the story line in Acts is how a small group of confused and frightened disciples managed to create a worldwide movement of planting kingdom outposts all over the Greco-Roman world in one generation. He hasn’t forgotten about the promise of Jesus to reappear in glory – but his focus is on the need of all humans everywhere to hear the Jesus story in transforming manner.

Maybe Luke figured out how to squint with one eye and see normally with the other! That’s really what Advent calls us to do. When you look at the condition of the world as we see it these days, squinting into the future hinted at in Scripture can be a huge motivator for us to remain faithful to Christ. But if we take seriously the example of the early church under the leadership of the apostles, we will not ignore the world around us. It’s hard to squint with one eye and look off into the distance while keeping the other eye focused on our immediate surroundings. But I’m pretty confident that is exactly what Jesus has called us to do.

The kind of squinting Advent calls us to means we look forward, not backward. Its focus is on the glory of the reappearing of Jesus as a way of causing us to be concerned about the here and now and getting the gospel message out. Sadly many look to the past- a way of worshipping, a way of educating ministry, a way of doing evangelism, a way of sending missionaries to the ends of the earth – that is more about “the way we use to do it” than “the way the here and now needs.”

May Advent teach us to squint with one eye and clearly see the world around us with the other so that our lives and witness can bring the transforming news that Jesus has come to the ends of the earth and the end of the age.