As we begin Advent this year, as with every year passed, we still have every reason to sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”!  And we should.  We must.

  Christian traditionally has viewed the fulfilment of the song as the second coming of Jesus Christ as depicted in Luke 21:25-36, when Jesus is depicted as triumphantly returning to earth to be its global leader, at which point everyone will apparently fall in line or die.

  Many scholars see that vision as one born from and stuck in its first century context, that they (and perhaps even Jesus if they remembered and recorded his words accurately) misinterpreted the vision of the Son of Man’s return.  Perhaps that’s not how the story will end. Perhaps that was never the vision.

  What if there is a simpler vision that proclaims what we already know to be true from experience, that when calamity of all kinds hits, Emmanuel (God with us) is more present. Not more present because things finally deteriorated to the point that God finally cared enough to show up.  Open and Relational Theology assumes and proclaims that God is already fully present, that everything lives and moves and has their being in God. 

  We experience the Presence more when calamity hits because we wake up, we open our eyes because of our suffering, we seek God and discover that God has been with us he whole time.  In our humbled, broken state, we sometimes have the capacity to see humanity’s complicity in the human-made calamities such as war, rape, abuse, slavery, and all the “isms” we can usually think of.  We sometimes can recall when we said no to the nudge of God that would have helped change the course of thing for the better. But we didn’t, and it caught up with us.

  Every calamity’s rendition of “O Come” is a new altar call, where we say once again that we are listening, that we need love and guidance, that we are open and looking for the nudge of God.

  Like the North Star, we find that God continues to guide all people toward shalom, toward redemption and safety. For ourselves. For all people. For the planet we are inextricably related to.

  Is the calamity loud enough for you to listen, to see, and to care? We don’t have to wait. We can be proactive with our attention and lives and seek God’s guidance. We can follow the guidance of shalom at every moment should we choose it.

  What are we waiting for?