Zechariah is speaking to traumatized exiles. The temple's destroyed. They're scattered in Babylon. Everything they thought was permanent—gone. And into that devastation, God makes an audacious promise:

Then the angel who spoke with me came forward, and another angel came forward to meet him and said to him, "Run, say to that young man: Jerusalem shall be inhabited like unwalled villages because of the multitude of people and animals in it. For I will be a wall of fire all around it, says the Lord, and I will be the glory within it."
—see Zechariah 2:1-13

Walls of fire. Divine presence dwelling in their midst. The promise comes while they're still in the rubble, not after everything's been rebuilt. And then later in the chapter, God doubles down: "For I will come and dwell in your midst," says the Lord. "Many nations shall join themselves to the Lord on that day and shall be my people, and I will dwell in your midst."

This is the great promise woven throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The refrain of "You shall be my people, and I shall be your God." We're yearning for Eden again—to hear God walking among us in the cool of the day.

And I believe Jesus was exactly that. God actually, physically walking among us. The incarnation wasn't metaphor—it was flesh and blood and dusty sandals on Palestinian roads.

But then he left.

Look, the coming of the messiah, God as king dwelling with us—it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be, was it? The Romans didn't leave. The temple still fell. The kingdom didn't arrive in the way we expected. Jesus showed up, lived for about three decades, did some incredible things, got crucified by an empire, came back for a bit, and then…left again. Ascended. Gone.

Which is why we have Advent.

We have to annualize the anticipation of God coming to be in our midst. We liturgically reenact it every single year because God's not physically here. The promise feels unfulfilled. And it sucks. And we know it sucks.

But—the tension we have to hold—we also somehow know that God is in our midst, just not in the physical "walking around with us" way. God is in the rubble of our lives. In the ruins. In the spaces where everything we thought was permanent has collapsed.

God is among us when we see beauty in a loved one's face, or in a neighbor's kindness, or in a stranger's unexpected grace. When we share a gift. When we break bread together. When we sing songs that move something deep in our chests.

But staying alert to that God-with-ness—that takes work. Wake up. Pay attention. Be enlightened to what's actually already here. Jesus says it in Matthew 24: stay alert, keep watch. Because everything else in the world makes it so easy to lean into cynicism and despair.

I too often want to believe cynicism is more honest than hope. Despair feels natural after you've watched enough things fall apart. Materialism—the belief that this is all there is, all there will ever be—is easier than staying awake to divine presence in ordinary moments. Some days I'd rather believe that what I see is all there is. It would be simpler.

But I keep getting interrupted by moments of transcendence. By beauty that feels too beautiful to be accidental. By love that feels too costly to be just evolutionary biology. By hope that refuses to die even when it should.

That imagination of something better, something divine—the divine already in our midst if we'd just wake up and see it—that's what keeps driving me forward. Not because I'm naturally optimistic (I'm not), but because I keep bumping into evidence of it. God in the ruins, just like Zechariah promised those traumatized exiles.

So we hold the tension. God is here. God, come quickly. Lord, I believe—help my unbelief.

The great Advent longing isn't just for Jesus to show up again someday. It's for us to wake up to the ways God is already showing up now. To be a wall of fire for each other. To be the glory in each other's midst. To embody the God-with-us we're waiting for.

Come dwell in our midst, God.

And help us see that you already are.