Wake Up: An Advent Call for 2020

“Wake up!”  Those were the words the priest started his homily with on the first Sunday of Advent.  

“Wake up!”  Those were the words my pastor started his homily with as I listened to his streamed homily from the same week.

“Wake up!”  Those were the words I heard spoken in the video I worked through as part of my daughter’s First Reconciliation prep.

 I tend to think that when we are confronted with a message over and over again that it is God trying to get our attention, trying, you may say, to get us to “wake up.”

 ...But wake up to what?  Wake up to my sin?  To obligations I’m neglecting?  To relationships I’m neglecting?  To a God who I’m potentially neglecting?

As our year comes to an end, it’s hard not to reflect back on the differences between this year and those prior.  I think most of us would look at our lives today and wonder how we possibly got here if not for a global pandemic.  After all, as the decade turned on January 1, who could have predicted where this year would take us?

This year isn’t an accident.  This year didn’t take God by surprise.  This year isn’t straying from his eternal plan.  Like all things, if it happened, it was willed by God.  We know that all things work for good for those who love God.  If all that is true, then what of 2020?  Where do we find God in all of this?

We don’t have to look very far. 

He’s screaming to us through our suffering, through our challenges, through that which we rail against.

My family has been struggling through this year. Our particular struggle is 9 months of unemployment combined with high-risk family members and a foray into the unfamiliar world of homeschooling.

Your trials probably look different, but whether it’s loneliness or fear or joblessness or loss or insecurity or anger, I assume your trials are affecting you in ways that impact near all aspects of your life.

Such is life in 2020.

So if we all are facing this, if our particulars look different but our universal looks like suffering, how can this all be for our good?  How can God be making way for all of us individually in our own particular suffering to this unique world event?

I think it’s fairly simple.  He wants us to wake up.

What is it that is leading to our suffering?  Is it the particularly outward situations or is it rather a misplaced trust in our own hearts?  Is the world persecuting us, or are our own priorities leading us astray?  Is it something out of control that is the problem, or is it us searching for control and peace and security and joy and fulfillment in that which can never, ever fulfill us?

Is it us looking to this world for what only the next can fulfill?

It’s easy to see the suffering all around us and in our own hearts.  But it’s painful to look at what the cause of that suffering is. 

As Edward Sri says in episode one of Forgiven, when we are lost, God looks for us.  When Adam was lost to sin, he went out in search of Him.  He does the same for us.  Sometimes, oftentimes, we don’t want to be found.

Perhaps 2020 is God’s way of making us seek him when we won’t let him seek us.

Let us pray that during this Advent, we can stop, slow down, and look for the Lord who is so desperately seeking our hearts.