Advent Diary

Tonight we are celebrating the first and second weeks of Advent. We are starting late and not able to celebrate all of Advent as I had hoped but we are still going to get the most of these two weeks before Christmas. The fact that our people are beginning to talk about Advent almost as much as they are Christmas is encouraging to me. It means that this idea of "Christian Time" is starting to sink in and we are starting to get it, even if it is just a little bit.

The most remarkable thing about the Christian Year is that we are celebrating the life of Christ through a long drama of worship. From the end of November until Easter we celebrate very specific things about his life and, in some ways, reenact them. This is formative for us. No longer are we just putting this stuff into our minds but we are forming our actual lives around them. We are shaping our minds, our hearts, our bodies and perhaps most importantly we are forming our imaginations. Shaping all of these around the model of Christ. Whether it is a tree, a nativity scene, ashes on our forehead or stations of the cross they all take on the important purpose and value of forming us from the inside out.

So, as we journey toward Christmas and the celebration of the Incarnation we need help in anticipating. Rather than being fearful of getting all our Christmas shopping done we have to take advantage of the time and wait. Wait. And wait some more. We are changed in the waiting. We are transformed through the anticipation. We are reminded in our anxious waiting of the deliverance that has come to us all, once and for all, through a helpless baby named Jesus.