Advent Devotion #1

Mark 13:29-27 is the first gospel reading we encounter in this season of Advent.

In this passage, Christ is instructing the disciples of the coming of the Son of Man. In verses 32-37, Christ offers the disciples a parable of a “homeowner” who leaves home, puts his slaves in charge of the work and commands the doorkeeper to keep watch. The parable ends with Christ’s instruction to “Keep awake for you do not know when the homeowner will return.” The passage ends again with Christ telling the disciples for the third time to “Keep awake.”

This passage testifies to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is a reminder that amid global and societal shifts, not to lose hope rather to keep doing the work that God has called us to do.

We are in the 4th season of the For Collard Girls Podcast. Woohoo!

We have invited incredible Black Womyn leaders to share their stories of call and vocation with us. During our interviews, we discovered that cultivating one’s imagination was a shared theme. The shared theme of imagination taught me how imagination enables one to recognize that things are not how they have to be, and it is through our callings where we have a unique and gifted ability to transform our realities.

Christ’s instruction in Mark 13:37 to “keep awake” is an invitation to keep imagining and keep working towards a world where we are not surprised by Christ’s return but can fully embrace divine presence because we have already been living in Christ’s vision.

Theologian Howard Thurman writes, “Anticipation of the awesome vision should order a life for right living.” (Powery, 2007. True to the Native Land Commentary. p.147)

In this Advent season, as we await the coming of the Lord, may we not be distracted by our fears.

Instead, let us take heart. Choose courage, recklessly imagine and live towards a future where we embrace the calling that God has placed on our lives to testify to liberative love and transformative justice that dismantle systems of oppression that are obstacles to God’s kin-dom reign.

And lastly, because I’m the quote girl and love to read. I want to leave us with a quote from Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown.

She writes, “Imagination is one of the spoils of colonization, which in many ways is claiming who gets to imagine the future for a given geography. Losing our imagination is a symptom of trauma. Reclaiming the right to dream the future, strengthening the muscle to imagine together as Black people is a revolutionary decolonizing activity.” (Brown, 2017. Emergent Strategy. p.163-164)

In this Advent season, may we take the time to rest so that we can reclaim the right to dream and strengthen our muscles of imagination that will be needed for the revolution.

Reflect:

Take 10mins each day to day dream: What do you see?
What does Christ’s coming return mean for you? What does it look like? What will you be doing? Feeling? Being?