Sabbath Devotional :: Advent: Of Grace Notes and Glory
I’ve had a busy week. Household chores were taxing and unrelenting. Juggling our families’ schedules for upcoming Christmas visits seemed as complex as prepping for the Olympics. Mountains of recycling needed to be schlepped over to the center — cardboard, paper, glass, plastic, metal — heavy, unwieldy and smelly. The mail offered bills and stacks of catalogs we didn’t need from mostly unlikely sources (Cigar connoisseur? Horse & Saddle?) What probably bugged me the most was the sudden dysfunction of my car’s Sirius XM radio. How could I keep up with our chaotic government without the news informing me mile after out-of-signal mile? Despite my frequent efforts to tune the signal in, each one failed.
This little litany is an embarrassment of First World problems. It is just the gray glaze of mortality. This is not the way I wanted to spend the Advent season. Growing up Protestant, I loved that liturgical reminder of the coming of God to earth — the candles, the expectant attitude, the solemnity and hope, the hunt for the appropriate tiny door to open on the Advent calendar. I have maintained that beloved tradition over my many decades now of membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where liturgy plays a smaller role in Sunday meetings.
But here I was, stuck in a low funk with many obligations and an overall malaise. And no radio.
As I got into the car for my next round of errands, I turned the knob one more time hoping for a connection to the channel. To my utter astonishment sound WAS finally emerging from my dashboard. It wasn’t the news coverage I’d expected.
It was so much better than that.
It was the low, rhythmic beat of one of my very favorite songs. Coming through resonant and static-free was. . . Bruno Mars’ ”Uptown Funk!” I sat in the front seat with my eyes closed, moving to the music, joining in at “Girls, hit your hallelujah!”
And I did feel to sing hallelujah. I recognized it as a grace note from a God who knows me well.
I don’t know what combination of wires and airwaves worked to bring that peppy song into my car at that moment. The radio still didn’t work. Because I had my phone plugged in, I guess something triggered it to blast that lively, breezy tune. That was it. Just that song. And then back to literal radio silence. The synchronicity of the Divine.
Hearing the song — and attributing it to cosmic Good Will — melted that gray mortal sludge off me. It lifted my spirits. I was restored to some confidence that I could accomplish all that was demanded of me. Maybe this would be more profound if the car had suddenly started playing “How Great Thou Art” — but not for me. It was so precisely personal and so buoying.
And that set me thinking as I carried through the day checking things off my to-do list. My vision may be clouded by petty first world problems, but in the background God is always there — bright, radiant, loving — and with a perfect sense of humor. If the Lord can lift my sights to Divine omnipresence and care through a goofy fluke, God is also there when things are really going wrong.
I am a witness to this. Christ was there through my husband’s cancer. God would have been with me had Chris died, but he didn’t and I’m aware at some cellular level of how miraculous that still is. God was there through my parents’ deaths. God was there when my children struggled. God is there when tenure isn’t offered. God is there when divorce rips families apart. God is there in any rupture. Christ Himself was born into a world torn apart.
God IS there with the refugees. God IS there with the downtrodden, beaten and abused. That Holy Presence may not be as tangible or as immediate as we or they would like. But shimmering through it all — somehow above it all and yet in the thick of it all — is an inexpressible Love and Deliverance greater than any earthly treaty or rescue can offer.
And as the days toward Christmas unfold, lyrics to another song capture the essence of Advent for me:
How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven
No ear may hear His coming
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive Him
Still the dear Christ enters in
(From O Little Town of Bethlehem, hymn 208)
Linda Hoffman Kimball is a founding member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
