December 1, 2022
Dear Friends in Christ,
Cara and I have been looking everywhere for an Advent Calendar that began on November 27, when we celebrated the first Sunday of Advent, but we couldn’t. They all began on December 1. How frustrating!
This led us to realize that for the world, and even the church at large, the strongest association we have with Advent is the calendar, which our children open up each day to receive a piece of chocolate as we count down to Christmas Day.
It is a slightly thin and inadequate account of what was traditionally a rich time in the Church’s keeping of time. Yes, Advent is a time of waiting. But once we have said “waiting” we have said a very unattractive word. These days with online shopping, streaming devices, smart phones, fast food, etc. we do not like to wait. We like to have things when we want them. And so waiting seems like a negative word – it seems passive, unexciting, the boring bit before we get to the exciting bit.
But it is waiting that Advent is about. We remember in Advent the time of waiting before the birth of Jesus. And as we read the Bible we discover this time as filled with a deep longing amongst God’s people, a longing for something that would change everything and at the same time not quite knowing what that something would be.
Advent, then, is the season that we as a church go back to that time of waiting as the Bible shows it to us – as a longing for something holy and good.
When was the last time you paid attention to the longing of your heart?
Advent awakens us to this longing as we hear again in the prophets of the Old Testament the people of God longing for an end to slavery, longing to be back home in some sense, longing to be reconciled with one another and with God. This longing is expressed in some of the most powerful images we have in the Bible, especially in Isaiah – images of a dessert blossoming, of rain falling, of day dawning after a long night.
Now that the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, inflation, and on and on, has shaken our world, our inner desires and deepest needs are revealed. We see the world as it has always been. A world broken and in desperate need of the Saviour. But in Jesus we find our deepest longings spoken to, the longing that God is bringing about a future that is as surprising as a crucified man rising from the dead. And so we are here, waiting with bated breath for the kingdom of God to break in.
We wait for Jesus.
But hasn’t Jesus already come into the world, you might ask? Wasn’t that a long time ago? If so shouldn’t we already know what difference he has made? The amazing truth is we don’t yet know the full difference Jesus makes. We know some of the difference, and yet there is more. We are still waiting to see what might happen when rain might falls on the soil of our lives, when light dawns upon the darkness of our days, when Jesus enters into our lives a little bit more.
And so Advent is a time that names our deepest longings. The longing for God in Christ to enter our lives in a deeper and fuller way. Isn’t that something worth waiting for? Isn’t that something worth our time?
My prayer for you is that this Advent is that in our worship together at St. Margaret in-the-Pines God may once more awaken in us the longing of our hearts, the longing for the dawning of God’s love in and amongst us. My prayer for you is that this Advent you may once more long for the unexpected life God brings in the babe of Bethlehem.
Lord Jesus, come soon!
Yours faithfully,
Andrew+