"Emmanuel: Glimpses of God Incarnate," December 11

Saturday, December 11

Genesis 1:1-3

“God the Gardener”

IN THE BEGINNING FORMLESS VOID, faceless deep, wind-blown water, and … the word, the Logos. In the beginning, the preparation and the pattern for life: The darkness where seeds of new life germinate in soil, in wombs, in burial caves. The water without which the gardener has no garden, without which people’s bodies shrivel and shrink, the living water without which the soul languishes in eternal thirst. The wind who spreads pollen grains, carries Jesus’s words, and sweeps in to bring the church, the new body of Christ. The light who pulls plants up and up and up out of soil, who marks our days, who illumines the empty grave, and who is not overcome by the darkness.

In the beginning God declared darkness, water, wind, and light good just the way they are. Yet, as a gardener knows, their goodness includes the ways they prepare for something new to grow. The elements themselves anticipate what is yet to come, and it is good. The pattern from the beginning includes preparation for new life as a good itself.

Advent reminds me that preparations are already underway for our new life— life saved from COVID, from earth’s degradation, from our own crooked little hearts. I cannot see these preparations being made nor, honestly, can I see how our salvation works out. During Advent, though, I practice trusting in the preparations with anticipation, waiting to be surprised. After all, the pattern from the beginning is full of surprises: God came to us not as a full grown man to be king or in the form of a golden object to be worshiped but as a baby. Advent reminds me to trust that a surprise is here now and is to come.

Melissa Wiginton, Vice President for Education Beyond the Walls and Research Professor in Methodist Studies