The long quiet has settled in the halls of the Divinity School. Students depart to visit family and friends across town and around the world. Faculty retreat to cozier spaces to grade papers and prepare for the new term.
Around our building, the staff is keeping the lights on, holding our steady vigil over daily tasks not beholden to the academic calendar. We know this silence well. In the summertime, we crack jokes about the ease of getting work done when there are no students around. But in the winter darkness, the mood is more somber, the silence aching to be filled with sound and life.
This is the season of waiting.
We read in the Advent story of a young woman whose body holds a secret treasure. From the dark and quiet stillness of her womb, Light and Life are about to emerge. She bears within herself the great mystery—that God will upend the status quo—not with princes and armies, but with a helpless babe, in a ramshackle stable, in a backwoods town. She waits to meet the one who will redeem a broken and brokenhearted world.
In our present time, my colleagues and I in the Office of Admissions are waiting, too. Who is even now walking the path that might one day lead them here? What gifts will they bring? What hopes? Fears? Possibilities? We wait to see how our small corner of God’s kingdom is about to be transformed.
In our wonder, we find pieces of our own story inside the stories of those who have waited in wondrous expectation before us. With thrill and fear, we are Mary, leaning into the “not yet” of the next stage of our life’s journey. We are Joseph, seeking to be faithful despite his surprising role in a story he could never have anticipated. We are God’s people, longing for the One who will bring plenty into a world that declares there is Never Enough.
We are all waiting to see what God will do next.
Perhaps the good work that God is about to do is in you, or in me. What might my small influence do to move the waiting world toward greater justice and compassion? Will I sing the song of Zechariah, praising the God who calls us toward greater mercy and peace? Will I shake up Bethlehem, dismantling its lies about who should be welcomed, and who is excluded? Will I welcome the refugee child and call him Son of God, God With Us?
In the stillness of the season, may our words and works declare that light will outshine the darkness, hope triumph over despair, and new life emerge in the most surprising places.
by Katherine H. Smith, Assistant Dean for Admissions, Vocation, and Stewardship