What is God Up To?

Beloved in Christ, 

One reason why the pace of modern life feels so frenetic is that our attention has been colonized. Social media algorithms actively shape how we perceive reality, news headlines bait us into revenue-generating outrage, and consumer ads grab us at every turn, promising fulfillment through acquiring the right things, or at least enough of them. All of this keeps our brains in a state that is both hyperactive and passive at the same time. And it makes it feel like everything is always happening very fast. 

Without the ability to attend, God will always seem silent. When we hear the gospel lesson for this Sunday, when God comes to Joseph in a dream to set him straight about Jesus, whose conception looked like scandal, it seems strange, even naive, and we don’t expect that God will actively speak to us in our own day. 

The collect for this Sunday is a plea to rehabilitate our ability to attend: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” When we look at the pain in the world, when we sit with the chaotic injustice that has rained down on our nation this past year, our instinct is to always ask “What are we going to do?” But that’s not the first question we are called to ask. The first question for the people of God is always “What is God doing?” And how will we join up with it?

In the Orthodox Christian tradition, a common liturgical refrain is “Let us attend!” The promise of Advent is that God will act. Our job is to wake up, to attend, to pay attention, to hear the way that God still speaks to us through our own life, and then, only then, to throw ourselves fully into the stirred up power of God, that alone can heal the word with love. 

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya