ADVENT (2019)

Advent is a season of waiting. The word advent actually comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming,” meaning, it’s not here yet. Wait for it. Hang on. Persevere.

But what does that mean? How do we practice waiting? In our modern-day culture, the Christmas season officially starts the day after Thanksgiving. This afternoon, when our gathering ends, my family and I will go home, and turn on all the Christmas music, and put up our tree and all the decorations, we will be full “go” until December 25. Parties and baking and shopping and Christmas lights and Christmas movies, on and on and on, and escalating and intensifying and building until finally, Christmas day passes, and the high of the smells and the displays and the gifts passes away, and we come back to reality, back to the 9 to 5s, back to school sessions, back to drab, ordinary, regular old January.

Advent is nothing like this. Advent is not about how much we fill our lives with Savior-replacements. It’s the way in which we clear away that which does not satisfy us and create space in our lives for Christ to come. We wait for Christmas, with our bodies, our hearts, and our minds. But Advent is not passive. It is an active waiting. It is a season of preparation, of reflection and repentance. It’s a season to rethink our priorities, to realign our lives with God’s desires for us, to seek forgiveness, and to start anew (the first Sunday of Advent, in fact, just happens to mark the beginning of the church year). 

To spend the weeks before Christmas in this way would be radically countercultural, to be sure, but it would also serve to remind us that we are waiting for Christmas—and that the celebration of Christmas is worth waiting for.