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As a church, we celebrate the season of Advent during the four weeks before Christmas.
Advent is a time of preparation – getting ready for the birth of Jesus. Our word “Advent” comes from the Latin word “adventus,” which means “arrival.”
A season of arrival. What are you waiting for and hoping will arrive this year – on an
individual level, on a family level, on a community level, and on a world level? Where is God’s peace, hope, joy, and light most needed?
For children, much more than the rest of us, Advent is a time of anxious, eager waiting:
Christmas is coming!! In their enthusiastic yearning for the day when gifts are unwrapped and stockings are filled, children model and exemplify for us the spiritual longing that the church should have during Advent. Children can hardly wait for Christmas because they are certain that the good things they expect will come. They have no doubt – they know it. This is exactly how we should wait for what God is doing: certain that the provision God promises will come.
The Hebrew Scriptures are full of this expectation. At different periods in their history,
the Israelites were in the wilderness, in slavery, and in exile from home. They depended on
God’s deliverance. What would it mean to be people in captivity, and look toward the coming of a ruler who we knew could surely set us free? What would it mean to be people at war, and hope for the coming of the one who could bring peace? How would you wait, how would you hope?
Several years ago, I heard an interview on National Public Radio with a young mother
and father of three who were struggling to make ends meet, even though the father worked full- time and the mother worked part-time. The mother shared a conversation she had with a minister one day. She said that at times, she had been tempted to “sell her soul” to feed her children. She had been tempted to give up on God, and to give up hope that food would come. “But,” she said, “I haven’t sold my soul, because I know that there’s a lesson in this.”
By a lesson, I think she meant that underneath the struggle, she believed God was working, and something would come out of it – some learning or some growth. This mother, who had been able to provide for her family ten years ago, was now waiting for help to provide – for God’s provision. She trusted it would come, whether through a neighbor’s garden, a church, a food pantry, or a better paying job.
These are the thoughts and feelings of Advent. Real waiting without giving up, with
hope. Every year, the church waits to celebrate the birth of Jesus, because this practice of
waiting reminds us of another hope – our hope for the coming of God’s kingdom of light on
earth, when the lion will lie down with the lamb and everyone who weeps will laugh.
During Advent, we wait. But then comes Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus
– a time to utterly rejoice, to let the joy wash over us. Christmas reminds us that even though we are waiting in this world, God is already present among us. Emmanuel, God with us. Christ is already at work, dwelling in our hearts and communities. God is already bringing peace and good news – and God wants us to participate.
This year, let us prepare for what God wants to do in our hearts and in our communities.
Let’s open our hands to the people who are depending on God’s arrival. Let’s open our eyes to the presence of God already, everywhere.
Pastor Sarah
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