Advent comes from the Latin word “adventus” meaning “coming; arrival.” Advent is the time we as a church prepare our lives, homes, communities, and the world for the arrival of Jesus—whose birth we celebrate on December 25th. This might not be news to you.

However, I must confess that Advent bothers me. We have a wonderful cyclical tradition in the Christian church’s liturgical calendar. Every year about this time we come back to Advent to mark (yet again) preparing for the expected arrival of Jesus on Christmas Day. Here’s what bothers me: every year we celebrate something that’s already happened. We prepare for the arrival of Jesus, but Jesus is already here—born centuries ago!

Every year my family and I light Advent wreath candles. One more each week of Advent until all four candles are lit and then Christmas Day a fifth candle is lit because the darkness gets a little lighter as we get closer to Christ’s arrival. But Christ is already here! The light is already shining in the darkness.

Don’t get me wrong—I love these traditions. I’ll confess they’re mostly for me (certainly not God—God never asked me to light a candle each week during Advent). I have a need to remember that Jesus is here with us. I have a need to pass on these traditions and stories and this Christian faith to my kids as we gather around the wreath and read, pray, and sing. But what difference does it make to celebrate the birth of a Savior who’s already here?

Amymarie Schmidt--a friend from college, gifted musician, talented poet, and someone who lives with a deepness and appreciation for holiness far beyond what I can comprehend--summarized the answer to this question I’ve struggled with for years with this post from her Facebook page (used with permission):

“I run by these machines every day. They’re like a neighbor on his porch, waving as he smokes an old pipe.

A few years back, these cleared the forest that became our house. One elegant spruce after another, cut down.

Now we live in those trees. Rocked to sleep by a dream-wind that sways their branches. Some mornings, I swear I hear birds singing in the rafters.

It’s been incredible to run by this plot of land & watch it change.

Once a dense, dark, thicketed forest. I could only peer in as I passed. Foreboding, unforgiving, unwilling, alone.

Then, after the logging—barren, naked, vulnerable. Worse than before. It grieved me. It had given so much. We had taken so much. So little was left. Despair.

And then, spring. So much light. Acres of breath. Everything seemed alive, unafraid. Grasses grew up and danced like children in the wind. Flocks of birds pirouetted in the spaces once consumed by scrawny, light-starved saplings. Light strengthened the sapling’s feeble knees, their weak hands. They grew tall, straight, strong. Thriving.

This is the season of Advent—the season where we wait for a dawn that will never end.

I’m obsessed with the promise of this dawn in these weeks leading up to the darkest day of the year. These days like a bedroom door slowly closed to a brightly lit hallway.

In the dark, I wait for the door to be flung open, the room awash.

The room, of course, is my heart.

But I realized this today—by definition, you can’t wait for something that’s already here. The light that awakened the forest was always there—we only needed to carve away what was keeping the light out.

The Dawn that will never end is here. It came to earth, lived, died, rose again forever. It came as love, as a Light that longs to flood out darkness.

I don’t need to wait for Light. I need to carve away what keeps Light out. The unforgiving, unwilling, prideful, thickets that choke out new life. The heart may feel barren, vulnerable, worse than before but Light longs to strengthen our feeble knees, our weak hands. To make our scrawny sapling hearts into tall trees that never wither. That thrive.”

These words stick with me (and I hope you, too) today:

“But I realized this today—by definition, you can’t wait for something that’s already here. The light that awakened the forest was always there—we only needed to carve away what was keeping the light out.”

Dear readers, may God bless you with sacred carving as we become more aware of God’s presence and light already around us and in us.

In Christ,

PB

ARRIVAL OF LIGHT

LISTEN

ACTION IN ADVENT