SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
10 December 2017
Homily
Robertson and Muriel McQuilkin were married for 55 years.
They had a wonderful life together.
He was a minister and president of a seminary, She an artist, counselor and teacher.
In 1979. Alzheimer’s disease began taking hold of Muriel.
As the disease progressed, Robertson resigned his position to take care of Muriel.
For 25 years he stood by his beloved Muriel as her condition deteriorated.
He wrote three articles in Christianity Today about this last chapter of their lives.
To all those people who wondered how he could walk away from his “important life,”
he said: “When the time came, there wasn’t a doubt about what I would do.
It was a matter of integrity.
Had I not promised “in sickness and in health?”
This was no grim duty I had to do.
I got to do it for her.”
Finally he said, “We [trusted] in the Lord to work a miracle in Muriel if he so desired,
Or to work a miracle in me if he did not.”
So often we have it turned around.
We want the world around us to change.
We want the people we love to change.
We want the circumstances of our life to change.
As the author of the second reading says today: “But God is patient with us,
not wanting any of us to perish.”
We think we’re waiting for something out there to happen–
and that’s what the waiting for Christmas is all about, the waiting of Advent.
In fact, aren’t most of us really waiting for something inside us to happen?
The miracle of Christmas is rarely if ever “out there”.
It will always be inside us.