Most mornings this Advent season I have tried to rise early ahead of the family for some time alone. After pushing play on the coffee maker my next impulse is to light this candle that sits below a print of an icon of the Annunciation. Though the Orthodox honor the Annunication on March 25, precisely 9 months before a December 25th delivery (I can hear the age-old chuckle, as if anything about Christ's birth went like clockwork), I felt mysteriously led to ponder this event this Advent season, just 2 months following my second miscarriage. I don't know exactly what it's trying to tell me, but I know that it's a message of hope, of comfort, and of future promise. And I feel like I've relinquished my ultimatum with God, that I must bear our daughter a sibling. This poem has been a blessing to me and a summons to feel myself likewise weighted down and up by all this glory:
I thank thee, Lord, that if I die in this,
it will be too much, not too little living,
that I have sunk beneath too heavy fruit,
not withered in a desert far from thee.
Glory to thee, Lord, that thou dost give
harvest so lavish our arms cannot hold
nor heart contain the treasure of thy power.
And in the end forgive if I am proud
to go down blest by more than I can bear,
inadequate to carry out thy will,
inadequate and weak, but chosen still.
Magnificat by Jane Tyson Clement
1 comment:
i feel particularly connected to this icon because this was the one i researched for the eastern orthodoxy class. it was this project that really helped me understand the significance behind icons and to better appreciate this aspect of the orthodox faith.
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