Hush
“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air…” That’s how The Lord of the Rings movies begin. I know this because I’ve seen them a hundred times. Or at least, I’ve seen the beginning a hundred times, before dozing off and waking up halfway through the movie. “There’s something in the air.”
As we lean into Advent, it feels like there’s something going on. It’s in the air. I feel it, here and there. I hear it, now and then. It’s a holy thing, a sacred thing, a presence-of-God thing, though I wasn’t looking for it in the ways or places it showed up. A couple recent trips have put me on planes and in airports, which are often fertile people-watching locations but not necessarily dependable Holy Spirit connections. We live, after all in a culture where fewer and fewer people pay attention to Jesus, hostility towards things of faith is high and polls tell us church involvement is steadily heading downwards. If Advent is a season of Christian waiting, it seems one might wait a long time to sense faith in public places. Or maybe not.
After a semi-emergency Thanksgiving trip to Seattle to help aging parents, Friday found me in Sea-Tac airport early for my return to Santa Rosa. I arrived ahead of schedule and made my way to the Great Hall, full of food, tables, chairs and hundreds of people. I sat on a stool at the two-sided charging station table to power up my devices. A few minutes later, “Char” sat down across from me with her lunch, and proceeded to have such a loud conversation on her phone that you could have heard every word from twenty yards away. I was two feet away. I only know her name because it was embroidered on her airline employee uniform. Clearly, she was talking to a sibling about their cousin. The cousin had apparently had a long talk the day before with Char’s parents about faith, after hitting a rough patch in life and searching for answers. As Char described the situation to her sibling, she talked specifically about her own faith in Jesus, about why she believes the Bible, and about all that Christ has done in her life. Jesus’ name was in the air (loudly).
Having been happily bumped up to first class, I boarded the plane and said hi to my seat mate, a friendly older woman named Connie. Being an experienced traveler, I did what I usually do on planes–hide. When people tell stories of having big evangelism moments with strangers on airplanes, I feel both jealousy and guilt. I’m not that person. Normally, I put headphones on to discourage conversation and guarantee some uninterrupted journaling, reading or napping time. That’s what I did this time. My headphones went on, and I pulled out my Bible and a tablet to jot some hopefully prayerful thoughts for my Sunday sermon. After 20 minutes or so, Connie tapped me on the shoulder. Inwardly sighing, I pulled off my headphones.
“I see you’re reading my favorite book (the Bible, balanced on my tray),” she said.
Obviously, I couldn’t avoid a conversation. So I asked Connie, “Tell me, how long has the Bible been your favorite book?” Connie then shared the long and rich story. When she was a junior in high school (which I guessed was roughly 70 years previous), she hit a tough spot, in full-on rebellion mode, running with the wrong crowd and acting out in all sorts of ways. In desperation, her parents enrolled her in a private Christian high school…which she did NOT want to be at. But once there, she was embraced by a young English teacher. For the next two years, she was seen and loved by that teacher, who talked about Jesus in understandable ways, invited Connie to be a follower and read scripture with her. That teacher kept in touch with Connie until she recently passed away at 102 years old. I felt it as she talked…something going on. Something in the air.
This morning Anne and I were getting ready to board our plane to the east coast on another trip, when a man walked past with a neon-colored baseball cap. The large letters on the hat said unabashedly “I LOVE JESUS!” Indeed. Advent. Jesus in the air.
None of these are miraculous events by themselves. But putting them all together, they’ve done something inside me. I’m suddenly expecting something else to happen, the next installment of God’s presence. I’m looking at people around me, listening to snippets of conversation. I’m watchful, I’m waiting…and I hope you are too. Some person, some situation is surely going to be the next voice or sighting of Jesus. It’s in the air. I feel it. I sense it. Just in time for Advent.
C.S. Lewis is not known much as a poet, but his long poem “The Turn of the Tide” articulates this hush and anticipation of God about to do something big:
“Breathless was the air over Bethlehem; black and bare
The fields; hard as granite were the clods;
Hedges stiff with ice; the sedge, in the vice
Of the ponds, like little iron rods.
The deathly stillness spread from Bethlehem; it was shed
Wider each moment on the land;
Through rampart and wall into camp and into hall
Stole the hush. All tongues were at a stand...
And the tide lay motionless at ebb.”
Do you feel it? Hear it? See it? Jesus is in the air. It’s what we’re waiting for.
Peace of Christ,
Dan Baumgartner
Dan Baumgartner is the senior pastor at The Cove in Santa Rosa CA and serves as Secretary on The Fellowship Community Board.