It is a grey, rainy day in Baltimore, so it seems fitting that I light one Advent candle as I sit here at the dining room table, attempting to write a few words down before the baby wakes up to reflect on this season and to introduce our Advent Playlist.  (more ways to find it here)

It’s not a picturesque Advent scene like I’ve seen many posting the last few days.  I haven’t had time to put greenery around the bare Advent wreath.  The table is decorated in crumbs, “washable” blue kids’ paint that inexplicably won’t come off, crayons, matchbox cars, lego limbs, and some instructions for a third grade project on Ancient Mesopotamia that the third grader didn’t realize is due tomorrow.  (It was a long night, and I know a lot more about Ancient Mesopotamia than I did yesterday at this time).

We are all entering into Advent with our own stories, our own crumbs on the table, our own clutter (maybe not literal like mine) that threaten to crowd out the Advent invitation - an invitation which is at once a call to remember the Christ child’s coming and a plea for him to return.  It is an invitation to celebrate the amazing thing the God of the universe has already done - in space and time, he came to us in the hiddenness of an embryo, in the vulnerability of an infant, to unite himself to us and to rescue us.  It is an invitation to be honest with him about the state of that rescue (i.e., it’s not at all finished yet!), and to look forward in wide-eyed hope to the second time Christ will come.  When nothing will be hidden, and we will no longer be vulnerable to death or sickness or sin or shame.  

To those of you who feel like they are stumbling into this season of holy waiting, rushed and frenetic and worried there won’t be space or time to be still and remember the One for whom we wait - Advent is for you, and Christ is present with you both in the busy-ness and in the tiny moments of silence you may be given.  He does not need a clear table or an Instagram-worthy crèche on the mantle. 

To those of you who are too filled with grief to stomach one more sappy Christmas song at the grocery store or see one more perfectly-happy-looking family on a Christmas postcard, Advent is for you. 

The Christ child whom we celebrate was born into danger and into pain, to take it onto himself and to one day obliterate it for good.  He understands grief.  He is with us in it.  And until the day when he wipes all of our tears away, he treasures and keeps each one (Psalm 56:8 NLT).  Advent is as good of a time as any (maybe better!) to cry out for him to come again.  To finish the good work he started.  To plead along with the psalmists “How Long?” How much longer must your world suffer?  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.  

To those of you who are ready to celebrate, Advent is for you.  

A time to prepare, to resist the commercialism-fueled jump to Christmas Day, to remember Israel in their waiting and to remember that we too are still waiting.  

For what are you longing?  

In what ways are you waiting for the fullness of redemption - in your own life? 

On behalf of your family, church, city, world? 

And lo, the baby wakes.  

May these few words be an encouragement to you, wherever you find yourself at the start of this Advent season.  Whatever your story—and whatever place you are in it—the meaning and final end of the story are found in the larger story of the God-made-flesh, who came and who is coming again.  

Come, Lord Jesus!

Jill, for Ordinary Time

Advent 2022