Happy Advent to You!

I hope this season finds you in true longing, expectation and preparation for Christmas and Christ's return.  Perhaps you grew up in a tradition like me where your only association with advent is the calendar that you open day by day-- sometimes filed with candy!  To my recollection, I don't remember our church having an advent wreath, but I sure remember midnight Christmas Eve carol singing and candle lit service.  However, over my adult years I've been exposed to more traditional/liturgical practices of faith in college, Boston & even Portland.  I'll keep my Sunday School lesson short, but the gist of it is that in Church history Advent is celebrated as a preparatory season "it is a season of looking forward and waiting for something greater; both for the annual celebration of the event of Christ's birth, and for the time when Christ will come again." (check out)

This would explain why when I printed a daily advent Bible reading (that has become more like a weekly catch up) so many of the passages were about the day of the Lord, God coming to judge the earth, etc.  I mean, I was pretty much expecting sweet baby Jesus stories.  You know, the sugary sweet story of traveling 120 miles when 8+ months pregnant, giving birth in dirty cave with animals, Herod seeking to kill the baby and successfully wiping out all newborn males within a region, angels singing, and drummer boys rum-pum-pum-pumming. (Note, I was pretty sure I wouldn't find the drummer boy in my readings). 

God sure likes to deal in our messy lives doesn't He?  I mean, that is why this story is so glorious and mysterious.  Why else for 10 centuries have we been celebrating the tale of an teenage girl's "illegitimate' birth?  God, the creator of all things and invader in our lives said, I'm going to fix the fall, I promise there will be a Savior.  Can you believe the anticipation?  For hundreds and hundreds of years they looked for this 'son of man', this 'root of Jesse', this 'good Shepherd', this 'messiah' to come. And then in the fullness of time-- He came!  Not as a strong king, not as a rich prince, but as a humble babe. 

And the glory of advent, the longing, the anticipation is still there, because He has promised to return.  We will see Him in the clouds and He will be the great judge of all things, and He will right all wrongs and wipe every tear from our eyes!  I can celebrate that this Christmas.  I look around and I see the world crumbling, nations rising and falling, children starving, families broken, people in pain, our ecosystem derailed and I think... there's a King coming who will right all this wrong!  And this time He is coming with a legion of angels, riding on a white horse, with his sword at His side.  I can celebrate that!  Let us long together.

"For to us a child is born,
   to us a son is given,
   and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
   Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

"Look, he is coming with the clouds,”
   and “every eye will see him,
   even those who pierced him”;
   and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”
   So shall it be! Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”  Revelation 1:7-8