Advent is a wondrous season – full of depth and promise.  It is a season born just as the thermometer begins dipping its toe into the cool months of winter.  It finds its footing just as the darkness enters its gloomiest phases up here in the northern hemisphere.  And yet, it is the season that awaits the only source of true warmth and true light.  It is that season of contradictions that draws us deeply into the very mystery that is Advent.

We are invited here in the last days of November to once again begin our vigil – our waiting that was begun by the prophets seven centuries before the iconic events in Bethlehem.

The days are coming, says the LORD, 
    when I will fulfill the promise 
    I made to the house of Israel and Judah.
Jeremiah 33:14

Or, perhaps, the waiting began the moment the Lord God breathed the breath of life into His human creature.  And perhaps our Advent longing began when God first began knitting us in our mother’s womb.  But in any case, the waiting has been long and the road, often enough, has been rough.  That is true when looking at our history as a people, and in our own individual lives.  Here in 2021, we are still longing for hatred-free, war-free, resentment-free, anxiety-free, pandemic-free world – still longing for the fulfilment of that alluring messianic promise made to us so long ago.

But waiting isn’t the only thing we are called to each Advent.  We are not asked to idly sit on our hands in our waiting, not to twiddle our spiritual thumbs or impatiently navel-gaze in self-obsessive waiting, not to stew in the worldly juices in our Advent waiting – rather, we are called to wait and we are called to prepare.

A voice proclaims: In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
Isaiah 40:3

As our one and only Advent 2021 dawns, let us choose to live as a people charged with bearing a promise worth believing in! Let us love with the love prophesied by our ancestors of faith and modeled by Jesus.  Let us proactively live like a people of the light, a people of hope, a people of strength.  Let us confidently choose to keep putting one faithful foot in front of the other one.

After all, what are we waiting for? 

Happy Advent!