Advent 2022

In most liturgically bent churches, Advent took front and center stage at worship today.  There is plenty of ritual to go around the altar, greenery abounds, and, of course, in the middle of it all is the Advent Wreath with all those candles.  And while there is a theologically correct liturgy which accompanies the Wreath on its journey through the four Sundays of Advent, in many places it is more like a count down to Christmas mechanism which does nothing to slow things down, but instead, seems to turn into just another thing to do to get ready for Christmas.   

In many places Advent has lost its unique identity and been turned into a season which somehow corresponds to the secular getting ready for Christmas which always is going full steam ahead by Thanksgiving.  Advent was never intended to be a busy season, but a quiet one.  When it is rightly understood and observed, it is a time where silence is welcomed and the pace is slowed down to provide spiritual breathing room.  It is not a time for arriving at Christmas, but a time for a journey that enables us to know the value of waiting on God to act in His own time as well as to know what it is to live with hope.   

Everything we want is not on its way today.  Today's culture communicates a different thing to us as it provides next day delivery, instant gratification, and advertising that convinces us that nothing is beyond our means.  Advent is about waiting and hoping.  It is about trusting that the Eternal Light which shined on the moment of creation and the moment of incarnation is really out there and will once again light up the darkness in which we live in such a way that there is no darkness, only the glorious eternal light that overcomes.