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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!

  

 

Yesterday two beautiful creations came together in my mind.

The sketch for 'The Head of the Virgin, by Rogier Van Der Weyden is, I think, the most beautiful depiction I know of Mary at the moment of the annunciation.

I hadn't realised the poem 'Annunciation', by Denise Levertov complements the awe and serenity of the face, by imagining the inner life and mind of Mary at the point of receiving the words "Hail Mary, full of grace."

Take time to look, to read, and to sense the miracle. I may write a piece later on sketch and poem. Not today. Look, read and wonder – these too are prayer.

   

She had been a child who played, ate, slept

like any other child — but unlike others

wept only for pity, laughed

in joy not triumph.

Compassion and intelligence 

fused in her, indivisible.

 

Called to a destiny more momentous

than any in all of Time,

she did not quail,

                          only asked

a simple 'How can this be?'

and gravely, courteously,

took to heart the angel's reply,

perceiving instantly

the astounding ministry she was offered:

 

to bear in her womb

Infinite weight and lightness; to carry

in hidden, finite inwardness,

nine months of Eternity; to contain

in slender vase of being

the sum of power —

in narrow flesh,

the sum of light.

                         Then bring to birth,

push out into air, a Man child

needing like any other,

milk and love —

 

but who was God.                       

 

 

Joy to the world! The Lord is come;
Let Earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

I know. Once you read it the tune becomes an earworm. But that first word, sung with such faith and hope and, yes, joy! The idea that heaven and nature sing, that the Creation is an orchestra with choir, and that God reigns – that is pure Advent.

But if we’re honest, joy doesn’t seem to be a dominant note across the world these days. In fact, the world is so lacking in joy that the Tesco Christmas advert is based around a joy shortage. The reassuring voice tells us they can sort it by offering affordable goodies. I don’t think so. Joy isn’t created by buying more stuff. Joy comes from the deep places of love and being loved; joy needs charged batteries of hope; human joy is the response of the heart to good things happening. Which brings us back to Advent

Advent is when we celebrate the best thing that has ever happened in the history of the world. Every year, an annual reminder. “Joy to the world! The Lord is come!” The birth of Jesus is the hinge point in history, “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.”

This Advent, our world which is in the midst of a joy recession, hears again the words of the angels, “Fear not, for I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people…for to you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour…”

Earth’s deepest joy is that once in human history, on this green planet, on the ground we stand on, God came to us in the fragility of human birth, “Emmanuel, God with us”. Of course Christmas is about celebration, and singing, and parties, and food, and friends and family. And we’ll do our best to share in that and be part of the joy-making. The birth of Jesus is a global event after all.

“Joy to the world! The Lord is come!” But what about the realities of our world, though?  We don’t need to be told there is a joy shortage, a joy deficit, even a joy recession. You can hear it relentlessly in the tone of voice of news readers, the angry arguments of politicians, the calls for strikes and the denials there’s any money, and behind all this a cultural anxiety that something has changed for the worse.

When you put it like that, Christians going on about joy seems a bit tone deaf to people who are struggling with the cost of eating and heating. Not to mention that world out there, where there is so much suffering, loss, anxiety about the future. And the fear that maybe the big problems are running beyond our human capacity to control.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Isaiah understood that joy is rooted in hope, and grows out of faith in God the Creator and Redeemer. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and his name shall be called wonderful Counsellor, mighty God, everlasting Father, prince of Peace.”

Christian joy is not a denial of darkness; it is an affirmation of the light of God in Christ. Advent joy celebrates the always truth that God is in control, that “the government is upon his shoulders.”

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

So. “Let every heart prepare him room,”

Grace, peace… and joy,

Living a few miles from the North Sea, it isn't hard to imagine the uncontained power of the sea, from the gentle lapping of a full tide on a still day, to the boiling anger of the sea in a storm.

For the people of Israel the sea was a ready to hand metaphor for danger, the mysteries of providence, the vast and unknowable, the lurking of monsters, and the preferred invasion methods of their enemies. The sea isd an untamed power – or so it seemed.

No surprise then, that when it came to finding ways to tell the world, and themselves, that God is in control, Psalmists and Prophets spoke and wrote about the ease and authority with which God navigated the seas, sustained the division between sea and dry land, and as Creator, set the boundaries for the oceans.

That's why Isaiah quite naturally conjures up a picture of God stilling the storms of historical events, making a way through the roiling politics and power-plays of the nations, reassuring little Israel that however big the waves of Empire, their God was the One who made new things happen – like freedom, justice, renewed hope, and a better future.

"This is what the Lord says—he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!"

Advent is about the advent of newness, the incoming waves of God's purposes, the harnessed powers of redeeming love and creative renewal breaking on the shores of human history, the incoming tide of hope and energy to do new things.

God is in control. "The government shall be on His shoulders…" Oh I wish!

But turn that wish into prayer, and let prayer become determined desire, performative words, interventive works and practices of mercy, redemptive gestures of compassion. Forget the former things. Don't dwell on the past. Pray as never before, and as an Advent prayer, "Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Pray it, and wherever and whenever we can, let God's Advent come through us.

Let the government of the Christ child, the love of the crucified Jesus, the transforming life of the risen Lord, begin where it must always begin; in hands that bring our gifts in worship of the Christ child, hearts obedient to the radical call of the Crucified, and borne on feet that follow the Risen Lord who goes ahead of us. And in all of this, trust the One who more than once commanded the sea, "Peace. Be still!"

Those moments of awareness, when our attention is drawn, when we see what we are looking at for the reality that it is; moments of what? Revelation? Epiphany? Summons? Attentiveness? 

Each of these singularly or in combination, perhaps. 

We were out walking recently in what used to be a forest, but following Storm Arwen, is now deforested ground covered with tree stumps, and disfigured further by the track scars of heavy machinery.

I remember it as a quiet mature forest, rich in bird life, with a network of paths giving a choice of direction, length and scenery. One winter morning we stood in it watching goldcrest wrens feeding on the ground and high in the trees.

But out walking the other day on the surviving paths, navigating machine tracks so deep they were flooded ditches after the recent flood-inducing rainfall, the land both looked and felt desolate.

Until I turned round. The sun was settling over Clachnaben, the sky like backlit Lalique. The hazy light and the layered landscape in the distance, was in stark contrast to the several square miles of dull dankness in close proximity around us.

The photo was taken from Garlogie,  21 miles away from Clachnaben. I had turned back to do a 360 degree survey. And away over there, the sun.

Isaiah is full of such moments. Light shining in darkness, the first finger line traces of dawn, the blazing radiance of the light of the nations. And the locus classicus of Advent hope:

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned." (Isaiah 9.2)

That moment when you turn round and are made to see that life is backlit by the heavens, and the surrounding gloom of life's landscape is part of a world where light carries its own promise of luminous hope.

The horizontal layers of horizons, bathed in filtered sunlight, become a sacrament of the present moment, signalling an encounter with a Presence that intersects with the world, and touches into our own inner world of faith and longing, hope and uncertainty, love and loss.  

Maybe Advent faith is the unexplained urge to turn round and face the sun; and then to open ourselves to the God who is light. "Arise! Shine! Your light has come!" Such a moment of turning is hard to explain. What moves us to turn? What enables us to see what we are looking at? The Advent answer is as old as the human longing: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…"

Not all roads make for an aesthetically pleasing photograph. I have photos of roads in the highlands and alongside lochs, and single-track not-quite roads running through several favourite glens. Roads of course don't have to be attractive, but they do have to be fit for purpose, which is to make travel easy, or at least easier

Isaiah knew about roads, because he knew also about trackless wastes, never ending desert, wilderness where travellers become disoriented, and run out of energy and water. At least if there's a road that goes somewhere you have a chance.

Seventy years earlier the exiles had trekked across some of the most inhospitable land in the middle east. All very well to say the Lord was going to set them free, that Babylon would fall, and they could go home.

How? What about transport, provisions, water? The logistics were hard enough. Add to that the dangerous terrain of desert, mountain and wilderness, and maybe Babylon wasn't so bad after all.

And Isaiah said, "A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God…See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland."

Not only will God bring them home to Zion, he'll build the road for them. It's this outrageous optimism that makes Isaiah the stand out prophet of Advent. I read him, year on year, to rinse my mind of pessimism and negativity, which often takes the form of an unhealthy realism, the kind of well reasoned caution that thrives by suppressing imagination. Isaiah is an adrenaline shot for jaded imaginations, and an antidote for resignation to the status quo. 

We all have our ways to go in the life that is ours, sometimes through arid, barren and even featureless landscape. You might even think that as a culture and society that's exactly where we all find ourselves right now – in a strange world where it's hard to find our way.

This year as every year, Advent has come at the right time. Advent is the promise of paths in the desert, roads in the wilderness, a way to travel and a place to go.

Five Hundred years later, John the Baptist would be guilty of breach of the peace as he shouted Isaiah's words back at all those seeking a new way, and a new hope. If ever there was a fanatic for Advent and a fan of Isaiah, it was John the Baptist.

Advent is when we remember again, that Jesus walked that way ahead of us, will be that way for us, and summons those, like us, who feel exiled, on the margins, held down and held back, to come, and follow him on the way. Advent is the time for finding our way again.

It's true. To plant a tree is to trust in the future. A tree is a long term investment in life The prophet Isaiah repeatedly speaks about trees as symbols of hope.

Trees are those slow growing signposts that line the road to Zion. Listen to the applause of creation for the Creator as "the trees of the field clap their hands". Trees that in the long years of arboreal life are to be pictured as signs of God's promise that "as the days of a tree" so shall be the long life of his people.

Isaiah finds so many ways to encourage faith, to restore hope, and to find metaphors for the reality of the incomparable God, who when He moves in justice and mercy creation applauds, dances, and bursts into fruitfulness. 

In the hopeful imagination of Isaiah, God will grow trees of hope in a new landscape in which the wilderness becomes a forest, the desert an orchard, the barren place an olive grove.

This wonderful poem describes hope as the impossible reforestation of the desert.

I will make trees grow in the desert.
    I will plant cedar and acacia trees there.
    I will plant myrtle and olive trees there.
I will make juniper trees grow in the dry and empty desert.
    I will plant fir and cypress trees there.
   Then people will see and know
    that my powerful hand has done it.
They will consider and understand
    that I have created it.
    I am the Holy One of Israel.”

My guess is we don't pay enough attention to trees. Preoccupied by money, anxious about today let alone tomorrow, accustomed to think short term instead of a future oriented hopefulness – no wonder a walk in a wood makes a difference to how we feel inside, and how we look at the world.

This Advent, Christmas trees don't have to be artificial, bauble bedecked stumps cut off too soon. Instead walk the woods with Isaiah, and listen for the applause of creation- consider and understand – God makes all this happen. Immanuel, God with us.