These words from The Rev. Allan Boesak may be familiar to you. Over the years I have often posted them during Advent. There is a timeless quality about them in the way they speak to the realities of our lives today and the world in every generation.
This year, however, they feel and sound to me especially relevant, needed, and challenging:
- Relevant in light of what President Trump and his administration are doing in this country, at sea, and across the world;
- Needed as a reminder that the repetition and persistence of cruelty, violence, and denigration of human dignity does not make them true; and
- Challenging in their confrontation of us with what we have accepted as true and what we have accepted as not true.
That challenge is personal in a couple of ways. First, it asks me to look at myself and how I am living and contributing to what is and is not true. I feel the contradiction within me between the It-is-not-true-statements and the This-is-true-statements. For example, I can affirm “It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss,” and yet I often also feel powerless, hopeless, and stuck. I can also affirm the “for God so loved the world” truth but if I don’t embody and live that truth then we only get more of what is not true.
Maybe you feel a similar contradiction. Maybe the contradiction isn’t a failing, but a call to choose and commit, to speak and act, to practice our way into becoming the truth we want for ourselves and others. What does that look like in your life today?
Second, the format contrasting “It is not true that” with “This is true” asks me to consider those two statements in my life today. What do I need to name as not true and what do I need to name as true? And then how will I embody and live what is true? What would it be like to write a couple of those contrasting statements for ourselves?
Here are a couple of mine:
- It is not true that the present darkness has prevailed – This is true: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
- It is not true that I am too small and powerless to make a difference – This is true: A mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds on earth, becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches.
What about you? What would you write for yourself?
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Photo by Amy Hepworth on Unsplash.
The Rev. Allan Boesak (1946 – ) is a South African theologian (ordained in the Dutch Reformed Church), politician, and anti-apartheid activist. His Advent credo was originally published in “Gathered for Life: Official Report, VI Assembly, World Council of Churches”, ed. David Gill (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1983), 228-229. I believe it was also included in his book, Walking on Thorns: Call to Christian Obedience, published in 1985.
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