Lights and Glitter

Though Advent is the first season on the Christian calendar, it gives the church fits.  The church does not seem to know what to do with it.  The problem does not have to do with a lack of understanding.  It is more an issue of listening to the culture around us which puts Christmas on express delivery.  Advent is about exploring what it means to live with hope and anticipation.  It is not a season which simply prepares us for Christmas as it is defined by culture, but one which prepares and makes the heart ready for Christ to be present in all the many parts of our life. 

 

The world is in a hurry to get Christmas here and to get it done and there is no rest until the last note  of the cantata has been sung and the final gift is unwrapped.  Advent is really more about experiencing the rest which comes with waiting.  It is about savoring with every sense what it means for the Holy One to be sent into the world through the most common of means and to exit the same world through the most vilest of means.  It is about struggling to understand that Jesus born in Bethlehem came not as a hero character in a great story, but as a Savior.

 

We sing about the Savior during these days.  And the closer the Christ-event comes, the more we will sing the songs extolling Him as our Savior.  What Advent does is to give us some time to consider that a Savior means there is a need for deliverance.   We are the ones in need of deliverance.  We are the sinners who cannot make things right between ourselves and God.  Advent creates some space to sit with this reality of the human heart.  The more I sit, the more I realize no one needs this Savior as much as I do.  But, then maybe Advent is about this kind of heart work and not so much about the light and glitter work.