Holding Longing: Jesus as the Fulfillment of Our Longing

Hello Readers!

I hope your Thanksgiving was everything you wished it to be. Advent snuck up on me this year, and I wasn’t as prepared as I hoped to be in terms of connecting with you here. I had hoped to share this week’s recording on Sunday, but a tech issue kept me from doing so. But, we’re still two feet squarely planted in the first week if Advent, so I decided to share this Advent series anyway.

I wrote and recorded this Journeying to Bethlehem audio series a few years ago, but in the happy chaos of this year’s compressed holiday season, I knew I needed to hear it again myself. I thought you might like to revisit it too even if you’re a long time reader, or to listen for the first time if you’re new!

This week’s audio is available for all subscribers, but the following three weeks will only be available to paying subscribers. Your financial support helps me keep the lights on in my corner of the internet, and I’m so grateful!

*A note on gift subscriptions: If you can’t swing a paid subscription right now, please email me through my contact page. No need to explain why, just simply let me know you’re in need of gift subscription. I’m happy to offer it to anyone in need! Paid subscriptions aren’t meant to keep people out, but rather to create a quieter and safer space to write directly to readers who want to be a part of this work.

---

For those who prefer to read the transcript:

Holding Longing: Jesus as the Fulfillment of Our Longing

You stand in your footie pajamas, shifting from one foot to the other, while your stomach fizzes with pleasure. Your breath fogs the window as you look outside once more, searching for a sign. A shimmer of frost, the shake of a sleigh bell, the soft red glow of a legendary nose. Something, anything to prove that the promise of Christmas is true. There will be gifts under the tree tomorrow, which you will tear into with great joy. You will throw ribbons with wild abandon and make confetti of red plaid wrapping paper. But that is after a night of nervous excitement and hours of feigned sleep. Tomorrow, the gifts will appear as if by magic. Tonight, you hold onto the promise. Tonight, you wait.

We all remember the flurry of excitement in the weeks leading up to Christmas as a child. We have held hands with longing, and it is as familiar to us as our own name. We know the longing of waiting for the sugar cookies to come out of the oven on the final ding, for the first flakes of snow to drift down, for the stockings to hang full and misshapen, stuffed with secrets.

We are acquainted with longing as children, and as adults we are acquainted with the grief of this discovery: longing is a dissatisfied customer. We are bottomless wells of desire. The black Friday ads beckon us, cyber Monday emails call our name, post-holiday mark-downs beg us to open our empty wallets for the temporary thrill of One More Thing.

I am as susceptible as you. But, before I become sick with my own wanting at Christmas, I must cut off this sickness at the source. After years of observing Christmas as a mere consumer, I have learned to cut off the constant urge to consume by observing Advent through the eyes of the women at the center of the Christmas story. I squint and attempt to see it through the eyes of Elizabeth and Mary.

Before I become pregnant with an overwhelming list of to-dos and to-buys, I bring to mind the image of Elizabeth. Dear older cousin, barren, longing for a miracle to fill her womb. I think of the answer to her longing, the nine months of a belly round with flesh and bone, filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Pregnant with anticipation, growing, waiting.

I bring to mind the image of young Mary, preparing to give birth not only to a son, but to a Savior. Like Elizabeth, she held a promise. I imagine her womb full of child, and her heart full of questions. She was unaware that she was to give birth to the final answer.

When I think of these women, these spiritual mothers, I ask myself, “What does it mean to hold the spirit of God inside of me?” How do I allow the Spirit to work within me this season as I wait with longing?”

Elizabeth and Mary knew long seasons of waiting, of preparing their hearts to make room. Perhaps they too had concerns and cultural expectations they needed to push aside to create space in their hearts just as their bodies made space for the growth in their womb. This Advent, let’s consider how we fill the longings of our heart. We will certainly buy gifts, and eat Christmas cookies, and open our doors to family and friends. But, these good things fill our time. They fill empty pages on the calendar. They don’t meet our real need or fulfill our deepest longing, no matter how hard we try to make them fit.

Ask yourself: How can I make space for the spirit of God to move in me as I wait for the coming King?

As we enter the first week of Advent, I’ve adapted the following prayer for us from Frederick Buechner’s novel Godric.

“Dear Father, see how we your children hunger here. We starve for want of what we cannot name. Our poor souls are famished. Our foolish hands reach out. Oh, grant us richer fare than what the world offers us. Feed us with something more than tradition and consumption and cultural expectations, for the world is no less starved for you than we. Have mercy, Lord. Amen.”

As we wait for the birth of Christ, may the Holy Spirit use the Advent season to help us name our longing, and let our desire for Jesus become our ceaseless prayer. This week, when the crush of Christmas begins in earnest, hold this thought near: Jesus is the fulfillment of every longing.