An Advent Devotion

"And Gabriel came to Mary and addressed her thus: 'Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!' Now, she was greatly troubled…"

Is there any who has not felt the fear of God?

I remember sitting on the hill of Hickory Hill Elementary in Papillion, a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska. A lonely teenager, I asked Jesus to come and sit beside me. When I heard the rustling of footsteps coming from a field behind me, I ran as fast as my feet would carry me. Who of us has not been troubled? Who of us has not run from God?

We don’t think this way often. We ignore God. But when we stop long enough to hear the silence, and when in that silence we admit the possibility of God, we know Mary’s worry. We too are greatly troubled.

This also is part of Advent, along with the waiting, the anticipation, the preparing. We are afraid of his coming. And we have good reason to be, for who are we but strangers to God? Who are we but those who have walked away and forgot God? And we all know how people treat strangers. We see it on the news. We notice the revulsion within ourselves.

Who are we that God would embrace us? And yet God does. There in God's embrace, and only there, is the salve to our great trouble--a divine womb of cosmic hospitality.