Healing Advent: Love is Being Seen

Today is the fourth and final Sunday of advent as well as Christmas Eve. As we tell small children, just one more sleep until Christmas! This fourth Sunday of advent traditionally focuses on love and I can think of no theme more fitting to close our Healing Advent journey. I know there are cookies to bake and stockings to fill so I will not take much of your time. Rather, I simply want to remind you that you are so loved. You are loved in the most beautiful way one can be loved, you, my friend, are seen and known. 

The message of Christmas, what we will all celebrate tomorrow is that God himself became human. As Eugene Peterson translated John 1 in the Message, God moved into the neighborhood. Yet, before he did so, he sent a message to a woman and told her she had been seen. Mary, the first recipient of this powerful, life changing, Christmas love, met the God who saw her and in his seeing her, loved her. She sings in her song,  “My heart rejoices in God my savior for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.” 

She has been seen by God, and in his gaze she has encountered love. This story is not unlike a lesser known tale of a woman by the name of Hagar who encounters God in the wilderness, abused, neglected, and oppressed. Yet this woman is the first in scripture to name God and she calls him, “El Roi” the God who sees. She too discovered what it was like to be seen by God and to encounter love in that gaze. 

Repeatedly throughout scripture God demonstrates his love for people by seeing them and taking notice of their suffering. In his gaze there is a love that redeems. In his gaze there is hope and promise that all pain will one day cease, that oppression will be no more, and that abuse will end. 

This advent as I read Mary’s song found in Luke 1:46-55, I imagine Hagar singing with her. I imagine their voices joined by the Woman at the Well and the voice of Mary Magdalene. I imagine Rahab and Tamar joining their voices too. Women unseen by so many and yet seen by God. Women who found love in his gaze and who held to the promise that their suffering would end, that redemption was coming, because God is the God who sees them. I wonder if your voice can join theirs? I wonder, do you know the God who sees you and loves you? Perhaps as you read Mary’s song this year, you can join your voice to hers: 

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;

for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:

the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him

in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,

he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,

and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel,

for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

The promise he made to our fathers,

to Abraham and his children for ever.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever