Wonder Of Advent #12

Longing Fulfilled

Read: Romans 8:18-23

All creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. . . . We know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Romans 8:19, 22

THE HUMAN HEART is restless. Most of us don’t need Scripture to tell us that; we have our own experiences as evidence. But it helps to have the confirmation that our restlessness is universal. Creation has been groaning, longing, waiting for . . . something. Anything. Whatever might resemble the fulfillment our souls crave. Something that fits the need for eternal significance that echoes in our hearts. A bridge beyond the borders that confine us to the finite, material world. A sign that life has meaning.

Paul writes about this longing in Romans with a startling claim that what the world is really searching for is a revelation of God’s children. Creation is not looking for good theology and convincing arguments. It isn’t even looking for claims of miracles. It wants to see God show up in the people who truly know him. And this longing, according to Paul, has been increasing throughout history, intensifying like the pains of childbirth. In other words, the universe has been pregnant with a coming revelation of deity.

Beautifully, poetically, miraculously, the firstfruits of this revelation came through the actual labor pains of a woman finding refuge among beasts of burden in Bethlehem. The restless groaning of creation has since been satisfied for those who recognize God’s birth and enter into his life. But recognizing him has been an issue for many. Who would have thought to look in Bethlehem? Who would have expected shepherds to hear the first heralds? Who among today’s elites would think to find him in an out-of-the-way country church, or in the streets of the inner city, or in the normalcy of nature’s seasons and our mundane daily events? Yet the longings of the human heart are met in places like these for those who have eyes to see him there.

Advent is not just a beautiful story, and it’s more than good theology about a divine plan for redemption. It’s a rescue mission launched by the God of the universe to satisfy broken hearts and meet our deepest needs. Any human groan is essentially a cry for something that has already been offered in the Incarnation. It may take a lifetime to explore just how those cries are met, but they are. The pains of childbirth brought an altogether different life into this world, and the world has found what it is longing for.

Prayer

Lord, it is not right for me to have Christ yet still feel deep, unmet needs. Show me how my longings are met in him. Satisfy the desires of my heart. Reach into my depths and make me increasingly whole. Amen.

REFLECTION

What evidence do you see of the world groaning for its redemption? What are the deepest longings you think most people have? How are they met in Christ?

Further reading: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.

“O HOLY NIGHT” (“CANTIQUE DE NOËL”), PLACIDE CAPPEAU