The expression “Maranatha!” was a key watchword and prayer among the early Christians. It is an Aramaic word which is a combination of two words “marana—tha” which literally mean “the Lord comes” or in the imperative case “Come, Lord!” Paul the Apostle used this Aramaic word at the end of his First Letter to the Corinthians. Many Christians today use this expression during the Advent season. Advent is a time of waiting, filled with hope, for the One who is to come.
When we live in love and act in hope, when we gather again and again at the table to remember what Jesus did and to know that Jesus is with us once again, we are people of Advent hope. We tend to think of the month of December as the Christmas season, and the secular world ironically reinforces that premature celebration, if only to entice us to early and excessive spending. But Advent is a different kind of time. Our task, then, here, on the near edge of Advent, is to give our lives each day to God’s own dream of compassion and peace, and to persist in living our lives in hope.
To that end, then I offer a poem I discovered this poem a few years ago. May it fill you and those you love with the Spirit of the season!
Kneeling with kings at the crib of my Savior,
Singing in praise with the angels on high;
Here with your people, wondering about you,
I’m thinking of Jesus and wanting to cry!
Father, I love you for giving me heaven
Wrapped in the form of a newborn so small,
But how could you stand to know all that would happen
When you left Him in Bethlehem in an animal stall?
Treasured in glory and praised by creation
God as a baby to humans on loan;
Why didn’t you run down the stairway of heaven,
Snatch up your God Child and take Him back home?
What’s that you’re saying? You left Him to save me?
You love me as much as you love your sweet Son?
You gave me your heart when you gave me your Jesus
And my Father’s full giving is only begun.
I bring you my life and the years lent for living
For your crib-and-cross sacrifice tear me apart;
When you count all my tears as I kneel at this altar,
May you know it worthwhile when you look at my heart!
~ Kneeling with Kings, Jill Briscoe