Advent begins with your need for God

Let’s begin Advent with a verse from a well-known Advent hymn. But before we start, let me make a suggestion: that wherever you encounter the word “Israel”, that you replace it with “my soul.” In this way the Advent hymn becomes a song about your life and about some great blessing you can receive if you take the words to heart. Let things become not only about head but also about heart, soul, spirit, psyche, and even body.

And so here’s the verse:

O come, O come, Emmanuel

and ransom captive  [Israel]

that mourns in lonely exile here

until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to you,

O [Israel].

Let it move from your head to your heart. Don’t merely try to understand it; seek to feel it deep within your being. It has a lot to say about you; it has a lot to say about all of us, here and now, and especially during this time of Advent.

The reality of the verse is undeniable: You are a captive. Think about this today: how are you a captive?

What has you stuck? What are you chained to, that you cannot free yourself from, no matter how much you have tried on your own? Is it some habit? Some mistake you have made? Some weakness that threatens to overwhelm you? Or something else: what is it?

And you are in exile. You are separated from your true self. You are separated from that person that you are trying to become, separated from your most intense dreams and wishes about yourself? You can almost reach out and touch the goal you strive for, but something always keeps you from it. And this exile you suffer is a lonely place. No one has access to it save you. No one merely human, that is.

And so you mourn. Oh how you yearn for what you cannot give yourself, that your own efforts cannot acquire for you. Perhaps it is something you have lost and wish you could have back, but it is lost to you seemingly forever.

What you need to break those chains, to put an end to your loneliness and your mourning, is not something you can give to yourself or can get from anyone else. You need help from the outside.

As it stands, your life is unmanageable and in this verse you admit it and own it. And then you hear the great promise. The only one who can set you free is going to come to you. In fact, is already with you. Let him touch all the dark and hopeless places you have considered in this meditation. And rejoice.

Rejoice in hope!