Taking a bag of clothes and some other no longer needed stuff into the charity shop.
There's that kind of sleet that falls like wet snowballs and the pavements are rutted with slush.
I walk in and say in a not too cheerful voice, with intended irony "Joy to the world,"
The volunteer lady looks at me calmly and says "The Lord is come."
I handed over the bag, we both smiled, and off I went.
Did you notice? She had the quotation exactly as Isaac Watts wrote it.
The present tense. "The Lord is come."
Oh, I know Advent is all about waiting, anticipation, expectation.
That inner tension we all feel when we know something big is going to happen.
But we celebrate Advent, Christmas and Epiphany because the coming of God is in the present tense. "The Lord is come."
He has come, and he is here, and yet year after year we re-enact those first longings.
We wait, anticipate, expect – not because it hasn't happened yet, but because it has.
"Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King."
What started off as an ironic complaint was reset by an answering truth.
Advent is the season when God's time intersects with human longing; the long wait for justice, the long patience awaiting peace, the long sorrows of hearts that have waited too long for comfort, the long darkness that no matter how long it takes, will give way to dawn.
The photo was taken from inside a furniture shop in Inverurie. I'm starting to enjoy photos taken through windows, the reflections doubling the lights.
On a gloomy morning, some of it passed sharing a rather large freshly made pancake, and following my encounter with a charity shop angel, those two lines came together:
"Joy to the world, the Lord is come." Yes, indeed he has – sorry, is!
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