This is the season of desire.
“O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” —that’s how the church year begins. “O, that you would tear open the heavens!” Like a child tearing wrapping paper on Christmas morning to get at the gift beneath. “O come, O come Emmanuel… Come, Wisdom, Come, Desire of nations…” We need you.
It’s a hard thing to admit.
But this is how we begin anew, with this cry from the depths, a cry of raw longing for the One who is both with us and beyond us. Source of our helpless yearning, and its answer.
Interesting, isn’t it, the way our culture transmutes that longing every year into craving for more stuff? Is it the invitation into Love’s mystery that sets off this frenzy of consuming within us and around us—blazing lights, frantic busyness, crowds, displays, loudspeakers to muffle our misgivings in the same sentimental tunes… and enthroned amidst it all, the jolly god of having and wanting, clad in red, drawing us in, claiming our hearts, promising to satisfy our emptiness once and for all…
Meanwhile, off to the side, the child lies in the manger—empty-handed, naked, helpless, homeless, and in need. He brings no host present because he is the gift, wrapped in torn strips of cloth. The gift and the giver both. The immeasurable longing, and its answer. What is his desire for us? What cry from his depths is trying to make itself heard through the honking horns and the 97th repetition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You”?
Or maybe that is the cry.
Whose desire is for whom, at Christmas time? Is it our desire for God, or God’s for us?
This Advent season, instead of the usual word of one or two syllables, my prayer in meditation is this: “You are the desire of my heart.”
You, and not my cravings or my anxiety or my resentments or my sense of responsibility or my lurking shame or my need to please or even my insatiable need to understand…
You are the desire of my heart.
Sometimes it is me saying it to Jesus. Sometimes it is Jesus saying it to me: You are the desire of my heart... not your dotted i's or crossed t's, not your oh-so-consciencious behavior or your guilt or your anxiety about letting me down or how nice a person you're able to be today, but you. You are the desire of my heart.
Really.
Come, Emmanuel, God with us. Come, desire of our hearts.