Thought for the Day

Advent begins this Sunday with all its anticipation and waiting.

We all want to know what’s coming our way.

To this end we keep our ear to the ground, we read the papers, we listen to office gossip. What’s on its way may be good. It may be bad. The future is filled with the possibility of promise or judgement. Or a bit of both.

It’s that official looking envelope which comes through the post that we’re half scared to open.

We’re all for promise. But what about judgment? The last time we were caught short and had our performance or motivations criticized it hurt like hell. We’d pop into a side room before we entered into one of those conversations willingly – to find out that someone had a bone to pick with us, or that they needed to tell us something which required that we sat down first or had a witness present – that we’d been hurtful or destructive or that we just didn’t get what the point of our job was or our marriage vows or our priorities.

“A word in your ear please?”

“Uh, no, maybe later….”

There is a place, though, where promises and judgement intersect. The promise of anything new threatens what’s old and obsolete and quite comfortable. We get used to certain ways of life even if they’re way below par and we stagnate - as my grandfather used to say: “It may be an ugly dog but it’s my dog”.

And if the bottom were to fall out and we were apprised of our faults, what then?

Well, sir, everybody would know where they stood and there would be pieces to be picked up and the possibility of breathing in air which has finally been cleared.

Promise and threat sometimes begin to look like each other.

So that’s not really the choice we have. It’s a choice between judgment-and-promise on one hand or staying exactly the same - with our secrets untold and our promise unfulfilled.

In the worst case scenario the future is filled with the same damned thing repeating itself endlessly.

And surely in a season of anticipation, anything would be better than that.

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Audio is HERE for a limited time. TFTD begins at 1.19.57 on the audio bar