Strengthen Your Heart

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, December 11th, 2022:
Third Sunday of Advent

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James
5:7-10

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

The waiting of this season – it’s not something that comes naturally to me. Advent is meant to be a time of pausing, listening, and preparing. But the world I’m so deeply soaked in isn’t designed around waiting. We live in a fast food and one-click delivery world – everything at our fingertips, quick and reliable. In the commercial hustle and bustle of the time leading up to Christmas, all the world wants to prepare me for is the two-day prime delivery window, ripped wrapping paper, and post-Christmas bloat. 

Just like Dr. Seuss’ Grinch famously realized about Christmas, “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store, maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” Is it possible that our society has got Advent wrong too? According to the position of honour given in the Church calendar, Advent isn’t just pre-Christmas.

What then, is the true meaning of Advent? It lands before Christmas, not to remind us to do our baking, wrap our gifts, and wear our ugliest sweaters, but to point out again and again that our purpose as Church is to wait for Christ’s coming with the same ardent longing as the prophets of old awaited Him. We sing, O Come, O Come Emmanuel – O Come, God with us!

If you knew Jesus was coming tomorrow – and indeed some tomorrow He will – what would you need to do to prepare yourself? In one line, James gives every necessary instruction: “Strengthen your hearts.” (James 5:8) Because the kind of waiting the prophets lived and the kind of waiting Advent is inviting us to live isn’t the anticipation of ripping open a gift or watching the timer tick down before we can pull the cookies out of the oven. It’s a waiting that is pregnant with potential, every moment set aside for preparation. It’s a waiting that isn’t about preparing my house, but about preparing my very self.

Strengthen your hearts! If we are going to make our very selves a manger to cradle Christ’s presence, then we need to make sure we’re not dilapidated, ragged, or messy. The mess in my heart, the mess that makes me unprepared to fully welcome Christ, is so great that it is beyond my ability to clean up myself. To be ready for the Lord’s coming, I must seek His heart and His healing. What a gracious God that He would see in my weakness not something to reject, but something to seek and to strengthen. He gives us His Spirit who overflows our cups with grace, He gives us good spiritual practices, the richness of the Scripture, and the encouragement of the Body of Christ. With the discipline and teaching of the Holy Spirit, we have all the tools we need to approach Advent as a season of spiritual training and growth. 

As we journey through Advent, we seek to strengthen our hearts to welcome the humble child, the just Judge, the Prince of Peace, the Healer of our hearts and the Lover of our souls.


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Stephanie Potter

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