In her book “Walking on Water,” Madeleine L’Engle tells a story of a village that lost their clockmaker, and their clocks ran amuck - they stopped telling time, went too fast and too slow. When a new clockmaker came, he was able to fix some of the old clocks - but only the ones that folks had kept faithfully wound, despite them being useless at the time and seemingly broken beyond repair.
“So we must daily keep things wound,” L’Engle says, “that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain.
“We may not always be able to make our ‘clock’ run correctly, but at least we can keep it wound, so that it will not forget.”
I think Advent is one of those “keeping our clocks wound” kind of times.
“Waiting well” is like keeping the clocks wound when they look broken. We faithfully do tasks that don’t feel always productive. We wonder if the clock can ever be repaired. We wonder if the winding is doing anything at all. And we keep the clocks wound anyway, hoping we’ll see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living - but sometimes not sure. Some days we quit, which is fair & understandable and in Grace, always forgiven.
And some days, only through Grace, we do a big old trust & keep winding, even though we’re not sure it’s worth it.
In Advent, we wait & we wind; we keep walking in darkness before we even really believe we’ll see the light; we tell the same Advent stories again & again, hoping they’ll get into our bones when our brains can’t quite buy them. We show up musty & dusty & unsure, praying one day the faithfulness will matter.
It’s good to practice this at Advent, because Advent tells us, “here is this story of when it mattered, & when we didn’t wait faithfully just to have the rug pulled out from under us.” Advent promises “God has been faithful, God will be again.”
So we keep our clocks wound, with as much trust as we can muster, as much hope as our tired souls can hang on to.
“We will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, & take courage,
& wait for the Lord.” - Ps 27:13- 14