Happy New Year!
Advent, the start of the Christian year, is upon us again. Rather than being a season for shopping and celebrating, Advent creates space for us confront the injustice, evil, and brokenness we see around us with the holy expectation of God’s coming. That doesn’t sound very festive…but, it gets at an essential truth. Despite the carols declaring “Joy to the world” and “Peace on earth,” there is often little joy or peace to be found. Bombs drop, cars drive into protesters, children go hungry, mothers die for lack of pre-natal care, lone gunmen open fire on concert-goers and Sunday worshipers, powerful men assault and harass those around them, families are broken, and our own minds and bodies turn against us.
Recognizing the darkness that continues to bind our world, Advent creates space to acknowledge that God’s work of redemption is not yet finished. It is a time for collectively crying out with the Psalmist, “Stir up your might and save us” and with Isaiah, “O that you would rend the heavens and come down!” But Advent also gives us permission to wait, even in the darkness, for God to come. It is a season that teaches us to keep watch over this broken world and pray for it, without making facile promises of speedy remedies. And Advent calls us to the certain hope that God will break though the darkness that binds our world. As surely as Christmas Day will dawn and we will celebrate Jesus birth, he will come again to finish the work of redemption he begun so long ago in Bethlehem.
Jessica Ann Hughes