Day 102 Wake up! Fix this!

For a child has been born for us,
 a son given to us;
 authority rests upon his shoulders;
 and he is named
 Wonderful Counselor...  Isaiah 9:6

 A counselor in biblical times sat on the king’s counsel to give advice and plan the course ahead. But "wonderful" in Hebrew doesn’t mean “super great” like we use the word today. Instead, wonderful meant “beyond our understanding” or “difficult to comprehend.”

I like the idea behind putting these words together in Isaiah. It means that this child is the one who has a trusted plan. And as we know from experience, this plan is decidedly difficult to understand.

Isaiah, in the midst of dark, foreboding words to the king earlier in this passage – warnings of coming occupation, oppression, war, and separation from God – changes course in chapter nine. Suddenly he is saying to the people, “Look, I know it’s bad. But wait for it! You’ll see it soon! It’s hard to understand, it’s a mysterious plan, but it’s wonderful and hopeful and it’s coming."

Writer Anne Lamott says the best two prayers are, “Thank you thank you thank you,” and “Help me help me help me.” As people who seek justice, who find ourselves burdened by the oppression in the world, I bet we tend to go heavier on the “help me” prayers – the begging, hope-against-hope prayers in the midst of Isaiah-grade darkness. Against all hope, we beg God to intervene in Egypt and Syria. Come Lord Jesus, we beg. Wake up! Fix this!

But Advent is the time when we have to remind ourselves, in the midst of these fervent, begging prayers, that God is not our personal assistant. We know that the Gospel does not solve every problem or answer every question. To claim that the one we follow is a “wonderful counselor” does not mean that we miraculously get the right steps, that we get in on the plans, that we get to see how things will turn out in the end. It does not mean that all our prayers get answered right away, in the way we want, in the way we can see.

Instead, God offers us a way to live in the midst of problems that don't disappear. God offers us a way to live without answers. Advent reminds us that we often must wait, and that God acts in God’s own time, in God’s own ways, and for God’s own reasons.

At the time of Jesus’ birth, God’s faithful were again begging for a king who would prove stronger than the oppressive Roman rule. God did answer their begging prayers, just not in the way they wanted. The king God sent was a baby, born in a barn. He is our wonderful counselor – the one with the plan we can’t always understand.