For many people, the four weeks leading up to Christmas are celebrated as Advent. It is my favorite season, not only because of the joy it brings as we deck our halls and connect with loved ones; or this particular year, because it ushers the end of one year and the beginning of another. The reason I love Advent because it reminds us that the most important lesson we can learn in life is how to wait well.
Waiting, more than anything else, is the central theme of sacred scriptures. Most people think the Bible is about love, but that is a difficult claim to support when you read about death after death after death. What most people tend to gloss over is how much people have to wait – 40 years, 400 years, for this person, or that person, or the Messiah.
Advent is a light in the darkness allowing us a glimpse of what has been there waiting for us all along.
As a people who no longer have to wait for much of anything (or if we do, we do so passing the boredom on our phones), Advent is especially important for us today. The most profound lesson I have learned about waiting is that I am not usually the one doing it, so much as it is others, or God, who is waiting for me to come to the right conclusion. In my experience, waiting is what we call the process of us coming to terms with the decision or course of action that is necessary which we initially thought to be crazy. When it comes to the stuff worth waiting for – the important stuff that really matters – I have found I am usually not ready for it when I would like to be. I need time to be ready for the change, decision, or resolution.
Which brings me to the second reason I love Advent: it celebrates the coming of a new world order. For all of our songs and images of a baby being born peacefully as we gather with family, we forget that this particular baby brought about a religion that would reshape our history. Not unlike any baby, for that matter, his birth changed everything. The prayers and liturgies of Advent are designed to remind us that we are meant to be changed by Christmas more than we are to relive traditions of old. While remembering our past grounds the decisions we make about the present and future, Advent reminds us that we are not meant to stay in our nostalgia. This is a season of newness and radical change; a season when we bring to fruition that which has taken time and preparation – not of food or gifts or the sort, but of our soul.
This is why I love Advent: because it is a season of poetry – words that convey more meaning each time you read them. Advent is a light in the darkness allowing us a glimpse of what has been there waiting for us all along; a season of dreamers in the daylight; of stillness before the storm. Advent is a season when we wait, not in passive boredom; but with active preparation for a soul soon to be renewed.