Abraham was sure he had heard the promise descend out of the sky, straight from God himself. It was the promise of a son. It was the promise that ancient loins would still bring forth life and barren wombs would finally produce lineage. It was the promise of legacy and the possibility of honor among a tribe built on shame for the childless. So when the promise-maker tarried, Abraham laid down with his slave, and tried to force God’s hand.  “Bless me!” his actions cried, “Bless me.”

His grandson Jacob would echo his demands decades later to an angel that wrestled him to the ground in the middle of the desert. Holding tight to the stranger while the sunlight touched the horizon, he demanded also, “Bless me.”

Years after the promise was given, Abraham eventually received a son and as a new day emerged over the cool desert night, Jacob received a new name. For both, there was a cost. In his blessing, Jacob has his hip put out of joint by the angel of the Lord and walks away with a limp as a permanent reminder that no blessing comes without sacrifice. Abraham too, though he receives his blessing, is asked to tie his son to an altar and raise a knife to his chest. A ram is provided as an alternative, but the sacrifice of Abrahams’s heart is already given. The real sacrifice was offered days earlier when, in the shadows of the night, God asks Abraham to return the gift he was given, the gift he had waited years for, the gift he was almost certain would never come. When it finally arrives, God wants it returned to him. 

“Am I enough?” God asks.

In the frailty of our longings we are Abraham and Jacob who so often long for the gift more than the giver. We too cry “bless me” with our eyes closed to the blessing that has already been lavished upon us. We understand God as the Father who made us, redeemed us, and is waiting for us to return home. But we forget he is also the Father who disciplines, tests, shapes and refines. We want children without having to build altars and we want to be given new names without broken hips.  

And so it is, at times, that we all might find ourselves wrestling with strangers in the desert. Tired of waiting, growing weary of living by sightless faith, we take the angel by the hand, or walk our slave to the bedroom, and try to bring about a gift that cannot be taken by force. We rage against God’s apparent slowness and wonder loudly through word and deed if we had ever really heard the promise in the first place. We doubt, we grow angry, impatient, disheartened, and cynical. We stop waiting all together, and slowly begin to forget what it is we were ever really waiting for in the first place.

And this is precisely the mountain that God desires to lead us to. It is the place in which our own Isaac is walking with a pile of wood tied to his back forcing us to look away lest he see our tears. It is the dark night from which angels emerge to pin us to the ground and show us our weakness.

Waiting is the greatest testing ground of our faith. In the delay of receiving and in the absence of resolve we are forced to examine the depths of our hearts like Abraham, to discern whether it was ever enough to simply be his child without the promise of receiving one of our own. Or like Jacob, to comprehend that God himself already knows our name, with or without the blessing of a new one.

No blessing comes without sacrifice, and every sacrifice God demands refines our hearts and returns our gaze to the blessing we already have in the gift of God himself. A gift that we do not have to wait for, fight for, or sacrifice once it arrives. 

 Picture: The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio 

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.” These words were penned by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from the confines of a Nazi concentration camp and they serve as a potent reminder for me this time of year that Advent is, indeed, the season of waiting and of expectation. I have also found that Advent is a time to reflect on the great divide between what I want and what I have. Some may read those words and fume in frustration that I have fallen prey to the same disease our entire country seems to be caught up in this time of year, reflecting on what I want and what I don’t have. Yet, what I am speaking about here is not longing for the newest Apple product, slippers, or another book to set on the coffee table, but those parts of my own life that still appear to be so far from anything that God could have ever intended for me. The bent and crooked parts. The twisted and misshapen parts that have never seemed to resemble anything close to the types of parts that could be of use to anyone. Broken parts, spare parts, and absent parts that make me wonder if, perhaps, I left the factory before I passed through quality control. These long, grey days of winter lend credibility to Bonhoeffer’s analogy of Advent to a prison cell, which appears in these hours to be more honest and accurate than any would suggest at first glance. Indeed, Advent has the ability, if we let it, to reveal the tension of the “now and not yet” reality we find ourselves in, and the reality that we find inside ourselves. It is fitting because freedom feels so elusive for me, as it does for many others. Peering over my shoulder at the last year I always recognize with a startling clarity just how few my steps have been these past twelve months, and how much further I have left to go. Perhaps this is precisely why so many of us will find ourselves making new resolutions within a week of celebrating the birth of Christ, for Christmas marks both a beginning and end for each of us. It is the year-end evaluation that meets each of us like cold morning air that burns nostrils as we inhale. It marks another year of finding myself, like the Pagan astrologers from the east some 2,000 years ago, falling prostrate before the tiny feet of the God-child to worship, knowing full well that the gifts I have brought him are wholly inadequate. But, as Bonhoeffer reminds us, Advent is also a type of prison cell in that it is a living reminder that “freedom has to be opened from the outside.” Not only from the outside, but only by the hand of a Jewish child reaching from the rough-hewn edges of a feeding trough. May this Advent season be marked, for each of us, by the great hope that this same child comes again this year to a broken and troubled world and, with nail pierced hands, stands ready to offer freedom again for the prisoners.