Imagine, Beware and Give: Can We Conceive How Much We Squander?

Beware of squandering our gifts.  

We do this in so many ways: we squander time, we waste materials, and we consume the lives of our children.  We live in a world of unbelievable abundance and unconscionable squandering.  You gave your people water in greater abundance than they could possibly #imagine. (Wisdom of Solomon 11.7)  The volume of this statement is staggering: we have been given so much that it is more than we can possibly #imagine.  

This unbounded waste...we will be held to account.  Can we imagine that?  As we await the birth of Christ we must examine the world into which we welcome him.  Do we imagine it to be as precious as he is?  Advent isn't just hitting the breaks before the fra la la la; it is paying deep and holy attention to the world we have been given.  

To beware is to practice weariness.  It is to step cautiously, eye carefully.  It is to study, to pause, to consider.  We have so much to be weary of: how can an Advent of beware enliven our souls and connect our communities?   Perhaps we can begin by considering the ways in which “squandering our gifts brings distress to our lives. As it turns out, it’s not merely benign or “too bad” if we don’t use the gifts that we’ve been given; we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and weighed down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief.” (Brown, 2010)   

At first this #episcopaladvent word #beware seemed out of place.  The sugar plum fairy dust has gotten in my eyes and ears and wonders why this doesn’t say ‘be not afraid’ instead.  Beware is the opposite of being not afraid; the being not afraid is a blessing, it is a holy faith.  However it has a time and a place.  And we should be very much afraid of the squandering that we do everyday.  We should ‘beware’, we should practice a weary attentiveness when it comes to the distress that our sleepwalking through life causes.  We should beware, at all times in Jesus name, angels appearing or not.   Yet inside these two, this #beware and this be not afraid is an Advent call to pay attention.  

#Beware  #Imagine  #Give.  

(Three different # Advent word calendars are feeding into my imagination this Advent.  From the Society of St. John the Evangelist (ssje.org) is #adventword a world wide gathering of images each day.  I love watching the time zones cross over, as at this moment it is both the 2nd and the 3rd of December).  From my pal's at St. Michaels and All Angels, Dallas, comes #radvent2014.  And last but not least from the Episcopal Church Center we have #episcopaladvent.)