Advent 2001

Thoughts about Advent

Dear Friends,

Most Guatemalans I know do not celebrate the season of Advent, but throughout the year I see them living this season! Advent involves waiting and hoping and your Guatemalan brothers and sisters are experts in both.

They wait, and hope, for the bus to come, and then wait to arrive at their destination. They wait in lines at the market, in the government offices, at the clinic, to board the bus. They wait for the rising of the sun, for the time to plant the corn, then to harvest it. They wait for the rains to come, and then to stop for the birth of their children, and for death. They wait for justice in their land.

And always as they wait, they hope, for in Spanish there is only one word, esperar, which means both to wait and to hope. In this land, one cannot wait without hoping, nor can one hope without waiting. As they wait and hope, they know in the depths of their being that only God can bring about that which they wait and hope and long for, whether it be the rains to water their crops, the birth of their child or justice.

They wait and they hope, they pray and they act, but all happens according to God’s plan and time. As we live through these Advent days, may we learn from our Guatemalan brothers and sisters to wait and to hope and to look for what God is doing in our midst.

A Christmas Gift

This is the season when we think about gifts, gifts to give and those to receive. One of the many gifts the Guatemalans have given to me is their testimony to their faith in God. I share with you one such gift, an image of faith, a gift I hope you will welcome into your heart.

"I will long remember Candelaria, in her long white nightgown, kneeling in prayer at the beginning of the day. While others bathed and dressed in preparation for the day, Candelaria prayed beside the bed, her knees firmly planted on the rough wooden floor boards as the dim light of the day began to fill the hotel room. This was the first time Candelaria had spent a night in a hotel; the whole trip was a new experience for her. To be in the capital city, to be without her family, to visit the National Palace, and sleeping in a room with strangers, but none of this hindered her prayer time.

I thought of the countless early mornings she had knelt beside her bed, praying for her husband, for her nine children, for food, for rain, for protection. As a mother, she knows that there is much she cannot give her children, her family; there is much she cannot do for them. She knows only God can protect them and provide what they need. And so she prays, wherever she may be, at the beginning of every day.

I think this gift, the image of Candelaria kneeling beside her bed in prayer, is an appropriate gift for these times of uncertainty, anxiety, even fear. Candelaria knows and lives with uncertainty, vulnerability, even fear, and in the face of all this she prays, giving herself each morning to God’s care.

Ellen Dozier

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 241