Advent is a Season I Love
Excerpt from Romans 13:11-14
“ . . . You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.”
Reflection by Anthony B. Robinson
I like Epiphany, I respect Lent, I wish we did Eastertide more and better, but it’s Advent that I love.
I love gathering greens from the cedars in our backyard to fold around the Advent wreath. I love the new purple candles, ready and waiting. I love getting out the silver candle snuffer that a college professor gave us as a wedding gift and laying it beside the wreath.
I love the first, haunting strains of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” on the first Sunday of Advent. I wait eagerly to sing, “Watchman Tell us of The Night,” and “On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry.”
I like purple.
I love that when the stores’ Christmas decorations are already getting tired, Advent is just getting going. I love lighting candles around the house as evening comes and laying a fire in the fireplace. I like hanging the Advent calendar on the wall, and taking turns opening one window a day.
I like the waiting and the watching, and the anticipation. My grandmother, Victoria, used to say, when something good was coming, that she had, “The Anticipates.” Advent is a season for “The Anticipates.” It may be dark now, but a change is coming.
I like the Advent idea of “keeping faith, hope and love alive in the midst of dark times,” because that’s where we so often are and so often need to be. I love that, just when we want to hibernate, Advent says, “Wake up,” startling me like a noon factory whistle. “Wake up,” says Advent, “the world is open at the top.”
I love that when anxiety and fear seem to be so all-over-the-place, Advent’s call to be alert isn’t about fear but hope; that Advent isn’t for mad anxiety but glad urgency. I love the mystery of it.
Advent is a season I love.
Prayer
Wake us from sleep, O God, for the night is far gone, and the day is near. Amen.
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