Advent consolation
Come, thou long-expected Jesus,
Born to set thy people free.
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth thou art.
Dear desire of every nation
Joy of every longing heart.
Charles Wesley, 1744
Eight years ago, after a long season of vocational challenges and disappointment, I reluctantly moved to a new state in the USA, my home country. To a suburban part of a new state. This was anathema to the girl who used to walk to the farmer’s market in her urban neighbourhood several times each week. But the silver lining was that our new house, though sporting holes in its roof, had five apple trees on its 0.7 acre of land. We determined the roof could be fixed, and we could sauce the apples.
In the subsequent seasons, as we planted, harvested and made applesauce, I discovered Psalm 126: Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.
I studied this psalm with a group of women at church. ‘Why are they crying?’ someone asked. ‘Shouldn’t they be happy they have these seeds and are planting a garden?’ ‘I think it’s because their seeds are their last chance,’ I said. ‘They could eat their seeds, or they could risk and plant them. Planting season is the hungry season.’ But those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.
Advent may not be a season for literal seed-planting – not for those of us in the northern hemisphere. My garden is under a blanket of snow, and all but one of the apple trees have died. They were old. But now I see more than the apple trees when I look into the backyard. I see the Cooper’s Hawk, standing sentinel on my neighbour’s pine. I hear the Great Horned Owl when I walk at night. And, though the world is full of war and the vocational challenges haven’t completely gone away and sometimes everything seems so volatile, I’m comforted that the sheaves the exiles carried weren’t all their own doing. God grew them. And though God invites us to participate, God also takes the responsibility for the output.
What we can sow in Advent is our tears – our recognition of our need for consolation. Our realization that sometimes, our last-ditch efforts only work in harmony with the One who sends rain and sleet, sunshine and clouds. Planting our seeds is an act of hope. And because our God is God of order and patterns, we can know that our seeds will not be wasted. Even if they don’t sprout, or if they sprout and fail, they will become part of the earth once again. And this is because we trust in the goodness and activity of God in Christ.
Because, to summarize Wesley’s hymn, Jesus does it all. Jesus is the one who frees us from fear of the future. Jesus is the one who invites us to rest and who consoles us. Jesus is our hope. Jesus meets our desire. And Jesus is our joy. In Called to be Saints, Gordon T. Smith writes, ‘ . . . the genius of the biblical call to joy is that we come by this joy honestly; as those who speak the truth, who name the pain and suffering of the world and who thus know joy in the midst of it all, a joy that is the foretaste of the kingdom yet to come’ (154).
We named our suburban, 0.7 acre allotment ‘Consolation Farm’. ‘Like a consolation prize?’ an acquaintance asked, as if the property were some wilted bouquet of carnations, a disappointment after the crown was passed to the beauty queen from another state.
No. Like God’s consolation. In this Advent season, sitting at my desk or chopping vegetables at the counter, I look outside at the frozen ground, the late fall snow, and remember God’s consolation. God’s consolation to me, individually and to creation as a whole. But there is another reason we named it ‘Consolation Farm’. It’s because, back in 1961, a TWA flight departing from a local airport carrying 73 passengers and five crew members crashed in our neighbourhood. Everyone on the plane died. Neighbors tell of airplane detritus working its way up through the earth during the hard freezes every year. We named the land ‘Consolation Farm’ because it has seen desolation. It has seen death and destruction. But still, one apple tree bears fruit each summer. The land produces fruit: black currants, mulberries, Concord grapes, raspberries. Children now play near the place where a Lockheed Constellation plane once burned. We sow in tears. The tears are real. But we will, one day, reap with joy. And that joy is real, too. And it is all in and through Christ Jesus:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. (2 Cor. 1:3-5)
Author bio
Joy-Elizabeth Lawrence is an associate pastor at an Evangelical Covenant Church in the suburbs of Chicago. She lives with her husband and 2 children on Consolation Farm, where she harvests edible mushrooms and sneaks them into soup. Joy has graduate degrees from Regent College and Calvin Theological Seminary and loves growing in knowledge of God’s world, God’s word, and the person of Christ.
You may also be interested in:
