Devotional for the First Sunday of Advent

"People, Look East"

  UMH #202

Note: Today begins of Advent/Christmas devotional. Entries will be posted here and on Facebook starting today and continuing through the Day of Epiphany, January 6.

I wouldn’t call myself an Advent zealot, like one of our former pastors who actively disapproved of singing any Christmas songs whatsoever until Christmas Eve; ditto for putting up the Christmas tree on Black Friday. But there is something special about recognizing Advent as a season of waiting, and singing the hauntingly beautiful Advent hymns that we can’t sing the rest of the year. The most lovely might be “People, Look East,” with its lyrics by poet Eleanor Farejon, who also wrote the poem that was set to music as “Morning Has Broken.”

“People, Look East” quivers with anticipation, bidding us to look in toward the rising sun: the rising Son. In Farejon’s lyrics, all of creation is eagerly waiting for Love, the Guest, Love, the Rose, Love, the Star, and Love the Lord, to make His appearance among us. The very furrows of the earth are glad. The stars in the heavens are keeping their watch. Mortals and angels make their vigil together.

But Farejon’s waiting is not mere passive expectation. Hers is a call to preparation, for all of us to ready ourselves for what is coming. As we await Love the Guest, she instructs us, “Make your house fair as you are able, trim the health and set the table.” As we await Love the Rose, the furrows are told to “give up your strength the seed to nourish.” In the final verse, the angels are told to “set every peak and valley humming with the word, the Lord is coming.”

What are WE doing to prepare for His coming? How are we nourishing the seed of our faith? Are we setting our beautiful Boulder mountains humming with this good news?

—Claudia Mills