Happy Advent
Happy Advent! Do not say Merry Christmas… it is still Advent. Well, you can say Merry Christmas if you’d like. It’s fine.
Advent is my favorite season of the church year, which is odd because I really do not enjoy waiting. I actually loathe waiting. Maybe I enjoy Advent because I know when the payoff is coming.
It’s Christmas Day, when we celebrate the incarnation of Jesus Christ (and, oh yeah, presents… I’m just being honest)!
Actually, the reason Advent is my favorite time of the year is because it is filled with tension. It is filled with light and joy, but it is also filled with darkness and despair. Advent embraces all of the human experience. We can at the same time be filled with joy and also experience the real weight of the darkness that is all around us. My heart is simultaneously filled with awe and wonder as I watch Soren smile and point to all the lights in our neighborhood while at the same time it is destroyed by the cancer diagnosis in the body of a friend.
Life is beautiful and tragic all at the same time.
And the season of Advent embraces this reality. In this season we acknowledge the darkness of the world around us. We all know things are not as they should be, no matter how wonderful your life may be. And at the same time, for those of us who follow Jesus, we are reminded in the season of Advent that this current state of the world is not our ultimate reality. Our current set of circumstances, as beautiful or as tragic as they may be, are not the ultimate truth.
In the season of Advent, we look past the lights, presents, cancer, and broken families and look forward to the day when Jesus Christ will come again to bring judgment on all evil and to make the most beautiful things we have ever experienced even more true.
That is why I love this Advent season. That is why, in this season at least, I embrace the tension of waiting for the already but not yet of Christ’s coming.
I’ll leave you with this quote from an Advent sermon I read earlier this week.
“What the church holds on to, by grace through faith, is two things: we hold onto memory, and we hold onto a hope. We remember the great things that God has done for us, and we hold onto hope that amounts to a certainty, because God has made promises and it is an inalienable part of God’s nature that he keeps his promises.”
Grace and peace ‘til we rise in glory.
P.S. If you would like to receive my daily digital Advent devotion called Digital Advent Wreath be sure to subscribe to my podcast, or you can listen here. Thanks!
