This time in Advent is a time of longing, desiring without knowing how much longer it will be. The tension between the not having and needing is thick and comes close to heart break. For the Israelites, it wasn’t a longing or desiring of a thing but a deep longing and desiring of life and dignity. Think about it. Do you know what that kind of longing is like? The longing that whispers the emptiness within because that loss has been a reality for days, years, decades, possibly centuries.

The brutality of such longing is almost unimaginable to those who have rarely felt the thinness of life and loss of connection for generations. Perched on the edge waiting in the thin air, hoping that even a sliver of a chance that God makes all things right after so many have died. How were they meant to continue hoping and longing when they didn’t even know the thick places except through stories and songs?

Psalm 137:1-6

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept


    when we remembered Zion.


There on the poplars


    we hung our harps,


for there our captors asked us for songs,


    our tormentors demanded songs of joy;


    they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord


    while in a foreign land?


If I forget you, Jerusalem,


    may my right hand forget its skill.


May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth


    if I do not remember you,


if I do not consider Jerusalem


    my highest joy.

How does one navigate such deep sadness? What if we shift the context to COVID-19? Does that feel closer to longing without knowing, thinness of air with a sliver of hope that things will be made right. Where do you see God in your longing?

-Dianne