Advent Asks Us To Surrender
Walter Wangerin showed us how the waiting is harder and more freeing than we know
Walter Wangerin was our Advent bard. I’ve read him most every year. One Sunday, I read his lines as my sermon because when someone finds the vein, you simply go quiet and say, “thank you.” I miss him.
Walter wrote about his dance (his word) with lung cancer, how this awfulness also brought him “ever more present to his life.”
During Advent, we often speak of waiting, one of the threads we grapple with during this season of bright sadness. But our “waiting” is no mere biding our time until the dream comes true. These days are a crucible, a surrender. A wrecking ball to the ideals, even the good ones, which have served us to a point but now must be relinquished if we are to follow love to the end.
This surrender is an unburdening, a widening capacity to trust that God is very near, that grace is true, that our life has—despite our relentless efforts—never really been what we make of it.
Walter’s long Advent became a season of years. And he con…
