Advent Devotional by Melissa Bryson Dowling

Habakkuk 3:2-6

 … in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy. (Habakkuk 3:2b)

The stage was set, the audience was seated, and after many hours of practice, my five-year-old sister and my nine-year-old self were ready for our annual interpretive dance performance to Amy Grant’s Christmas classic “My Grown Up Christmas List.” The audience, our parents, were gracious and applauded with every twirl. I mentioned this memory to my sister a few days ago, and a bright smile was reflected back. She confirmed that if required, she could give a repeat performance today … as could I. It was a staple in our repertoire. We considered it … it may still happen.

As children, we could tell by the tone that the song was meant to be one of lament, but our attempts to be serious were betrayed by our giggles all those years ago. A recent listen to the song struck a concerned chord in my heart as I realized the existential sadness embedded in the lyrics. 

“No more lives torn apart

That wars would never start

And time would heal all hearts

And everyone would have a friend

And right would always win

And love would never end.”

I also remember thinking that those wishes were actually possibilities at the time. The words “lives torn apart” had no meaning to me. My childhood was one of wholeness, innocence, and naivety. A home that was loving and safe. For that, I will never stop being grateful.

Thirty-some years later, every phrase of this song triggers profound grief. I have seen with my own eyes “lives torn apart.”  As a hospice chaplain, I spent Christmas morning 2014 in the home of a young family whose husband and father had died of an aggressive cancer half an hour before I arrived. I sat in their living room, which was beautifully decorated with all the Christmas trimmings, and I bore witness as two little boys clung to their mama, all the while gifts sat wrapped under the tree. 

Building a data set of examples to demonstrate the enormity of the pain and atrocities I have witnessed both first-hand, second-hand, and via the media would be both a time-consuming and yet easy task. In the Biblical text, our prophet Habakkuk does just that and literally complains to God about the horrific atrocities that lay in his purview (Habakkuk 1:1-11). To his credit, he does a good job synthesizing it to a manageable length. My complaints to God are usually very wordy. 

He ends the book in prayer, asking God to come to this place of trouble. Not someday, but “in our own time”( Habakkuk 3:2). His wish list seems as absurdly unrealistic as Amy’s. But maybe that is what Advent is all about … the absurd. Asking for the impossible and actually expecting it. 

God did answer, although not within the allotted time or with the amount of weapons requested. In fact, the tidings of great joy never reached His ears as he was long dead by the time baby Jesus joined us in this mess. But Habakkuk ends his book with a proclamation that he is choosing to live in joy and trust in the midst of all the trouble. Mostly, I’m impressed not by the trust or the joy but that he is continuing to carry on. He leaned into his faith as a way to traverse this broken world and not be crushed by the weight of it all. 

Habakkuk reminds me that I can carry the weight of the world AND still laugh with my little sister. Today, in my own time, I hold in tension the pain of the world as well as the joy of my children. My three kiddos are innocent, naïve, and swaddled up in love and safety, oblivious to the horrific realities of the world. For me, this Christmas, I will immerse myself in their joy so that I too, may carry on. 

Melissa Bryson Dowling