Photo by Phil Hearing
Dear God, I need Advent.
I need the lights flickering in the darkness, the purple and pink against the wreath of green.
I need the swollen belly of Mother Mary, her patient, jubilant waiting for a baby she didn’t plan, for the conclusion of a pregnancy she never foresaw but nonetheless saw through.
I need the Eternal, flesh-and-blood beacon of hope to clear my glassy-eyed view of a world I both know and no longer recognize.
Dear God, I need Advent.
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Dear Jesus, I need Advent.
I need the creeping, humbling movement towards Your birth; the steady, unfaltering flow towards a life beginning and ending in a human cry.
I need the jubilance of Aunt Elizabeth, the kicking fancy of Your cousin John in her womb as he heard Your mother enter their home.
I need the striking, steely confidence of peasants in Nazareth and Bethlehem and Judea; the assurance that You, O Son of God and God-With-Us, lived your 33 years among the poorest of the poor.
I need the reminder that You were shielded and cared for by the humble, time and time again, when You, Infant Lowly, could not shield or care for Yourself.
Dear Jesus, I need Advent.
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Dear friends, I need Advent.
I need the breathless, despair-battling waits on nights that fall too early and last too long.
I need the glorious anticipation of a Redeemer come down to earth, nurtured and grown in the belly of a Woman like me, a Woman whose courage encourages me.
I need the company of shepherds and angels. I need the exquisite yearning that arises in counting down the weeks until I join an eternal choir that declares “Glory to God in the highest!”
I need the Divine descent to incarnation that I, and all of my [human] race, might be raised up.
I need Advent with every fibre of my being.
And, thank God, Advent is here.
