AfterWords | Tears, Visions, and Hope in Advent

A short read
by C. Ryan Sprinkle

[Author’s Note: In the beginning, God placed the desire to be a parent into the hearts of his image-bearing children. “Be fruitful and multiple,” he commanded. Why? Surely it was because he created us with a capacity to love that, like him, is without end. When this desire is frustrated either through waiting, loss, or ultimate disappointment, the pain and incompleteness are true emotional and spiritual weights. Jesus tenderly speaks to us in this emptiness as he did of the blind man, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). In that spirit, this reflection on waiting, pain, and gift is offered “not of the good that we have done,” to quote an old hymn, but out of deep gratitude and thanksgiving. Our God—who used this suffering to begin a good work in the heart of my family, and who I know will continue to carry it on to completion until the day Christ returns—is given all the glory. (Philippians 1:6)]

For the last two years, the first Sunday of Advent has left me in tears. For many of us, we enter Advent knowing the end: A child is born; God is with us; all wrongs will be made right. In living out God’s story throughout the Advent season, we focus that first Sunday on hope.

For my family’s first Advent season at The Parish, Andy Culp shared a beautiful message of hope. Zachariah and Elizabeth, a family without a child, held an unfulfilled, pure desire to express God’s love through co-creating with him new life. And, as Andy tenderly put it, this can be a hard story for any family that has struggled to create new life. This has been my family’s story.

God blessed my wife Lauren and me with a beautiful baby girl in October 2020. She was and remains our miracle baby, brought to us in God’s grace through modern medicine, countless prayers from friends and family, and the gift of one spark of life among many dormant seeds. She was our only viable option, so we began this process in a place of anxiety and without peace.

As children, we memorize the words of Hebrews that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The night before our medical procedure that February, God in his goodness gave me a dream. In the dream, a physician handed me a baby girl, a baby whose warmth I could feel in my arms. That dream—the gift of the visible—provided deep, assuring peace.

As is the case for many parents, the gift of this child opened a chamber in our hearts we did not know existed. We love and cherish this smart, confident, and occasionally precocious little girl. She is the joy of our life. We hoped to have more chambers of our heart opened by such marvelous love. Years would pass with this enduring hope.

Last year, we entered the Advent season with plans to use our only remaining seed of life. This seed was not perfect, genetically “mosaic” as our clinicians described her. We believed, though, that all life is worthy of the chance to live. And so we hoped.

That first Sunday in Advent, Noel Bryant shared that this hope has two names, qavah and yachal. Our hope (qavah) created a tension that propelled us to action, hoping for God would do. Our hope (yachal) was also a frustrated hope, waiting on God to act. These definitions of qavah and yachal provided a vocabulary to understand the tension in our hearts. Out of hope, we would act. In hope, we had waited. And in waiting, he would meet us and point us to the truth of his grace: Regardless of our faith, actions, or inactions, he was not waiting on us.

It was a hope of the here but also, the not yet. For the second year in a row, I cried on the first Sunday of Advent.

Nightly shots marked our Advent calendar. As we neared the day for the procedure, Lauren asked, “Did you have a dream?” I shook my head “no” while trying not to find meaning in the silence.

The results were shared with us on December 23rd, my birthday. That morning, the lectionary reading was Psalm 127.

[4] Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is a gift that comes from him. [5] Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. [6] Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them[.]

What we are pursuing, I thought, is good.

“It didn’t work this time,” Lauren messaged me midday. “I still want one.” But, we later decided, not yet. And probably not with medical assistance again. Our hope would be yachal.

On Christmas Eve, we sang familiar hymns in numbness. Our smiles that night were forced. We entertained family, thanked God for the miracle of our child, and celebrated the birth of his Child. God with us, here to restore what was in the beginning: walking together in the garden of God.

In the days and weeks following Christmas, the numbness gave way to pain and pain to clarity. “We’re going to be okay,” Lauren said. “We have a precious child that is a true gift. But I’m giving this over to God.” For me, the prayer of Julian of Norwich was nightly on my lips.

God of your goodness, give me yourself,
For you are enough to me.
And I can ask for nothing less that is to your glory.
And if I ask for anything less, I shall still be in want, for only in you have I all.
All shall be well, and all shall be well,
And all manner of things shall be well.

So many in our Parish family knew our pain and helped carry us through this time in love, prayers, and presence. It was knowing looks when we asked to hold your babies. Prayers together in an upstairs room during house church. Unguarded conversation in basement retreats. We experienced your love and were made well in it.

In late January of this year, I had a dream. In this dream, my wife, daughter, and I were watching a small toddler stand up, attempt to walk, and then stumble to the ground. We all smiled as this little girl attempted to stand back up. As the dream ended, I woke up longing for something that was fleetingly here but not yet. About four weeks later, we would learn that Lauren was expecting a baby girl, with a due date on her big sister’s birthday.

We welcomed Eden Hope Sprinkle into the world on Wednesday, October 15th. That night in the hospital room, I opened up the lectionary to find Psalm 113 for the evening reading.

Praise the Lord, Sing praises, you servants of the Lord;
O praise the Name of the Lord.
Blessed be the Name of the Lord,
from this time forth for evermore.
The Lord’s Name be praised
from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the same.
The Lord is high above all nations,
and his glory about the heavens.
Who is like the Lord our God, who has his dwelling so high,
and yet humbles himself to behold
the things that are in heaven and earth?
He takes up the lowly out of the dust,
and lifts the poor out of the ashes,
That he may set them with the princes,
even with the princes of his people.
He gives the barren woman a home to dwell in,
and makes her to be a joyful mother of children.
Praise the Lord.

Advent reminds us that God still today beholds the brokenness of this world. For those looking to him, he uses brokenness to grow our faith and set our hope on his restoration of all things. In his grace, he gives us a vision of the rich heritage that awaits us. And like a loving Father, he sees and removes the tears from our eyes.

May the hope and promise of Advent carry you through all the seasons of your life. He is enough.