Advent at Providence
The holidays are upon us! And when I say “upon us,” I mean it in the same sense as, “The Philistines are upon us!” The Thanksgiving feast has just wound down and people are busily replacing their faux fall foliage with evergreens and twinkling lights. Ready or not, it’s Christmas, everyone!
This is how our consumer culture marks time. It was Thanksgiving. Now it is Christmas. Next comes New Year’s. Then Valentine’s Day. And on and on it goes. And therein lies the problem. The way we mark time carries within it an insidious falsehood. It whispers, “On and on it goes.” We move so briskly through our cultural calendar that there is no place to turn out and take in the long view of what lies ahead. There is no designated time when we, as a culture, consider what happens when the calendar runs out of days. There is no season to meditate on the fact that at some of our holiday meals, there are empty seats at the table that will never be filled again. Time has marched on, and it has left some of us behind. At what point in the year do we stop and reckon with this? What would we call this holiday and what box of décor do we pull out to set the mood?
It may sound morbid, but the Church does have a time set aside for that exact purpose: Advent. Everyone marks time in some fashion, but the question is: How should Christians mark time in light of the truth that “time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away”? What is history and where is it heading? We look behind and see the uninterrupted cycle of life and death. The temptation is to look ahead and assume that this cycle will simply continue forever—that the future will be just a longer version of the past. That the wheel in the sky will keep on turnin’.
But Advent interrupts that assumption.
Advent enters into our yearly calendar just prior to the celebration of the birth of the Son, in order to teach us the ultimate goal of His birth. This Child comes to make all things new. As wonderful as that is, it presupposes a reality that we try our best to forget, that all things need to be made new. This present existence isn’t good enough, no matter how much we try to cover the ugliness and hurt by wrapping it up in shiny paper and smothering it in sentiment. We have pain. We cause pain. We sin and are sinned against. We have the scars and the list of regrets to prove it. And, in the end, we all die, and we have the innate sickening sense that we will have to answer for all we have done. How can we as mortal creatures cope with this reality looming large on the horizon of our lives? Plan the next event and do it quickly!
Thankfully, Advent confronts us with the very thing we work hard all year long to ignore: the end. But through that confrontation, Advent graciously trains us to see both the magnitude of our need and the magnitude of the gift given to the needy at Christmas. Advent lifts our eyes to the God-man who interrupted human history to deal with our sin and misery once for all. And Advent reminds us that this same Jesus will interrupt history again to end the cycle of our madness and grant us peace in its place. Even so, come Lord Jesus!
Join us this Advent season as we step into this rhythm of holy expectation. Our Sunday worship will be shaped intentionally for this time. We will sing Advent hymns. Our confessions of sin will be more robust. Our liturgy will guide us to wait, long, and hope.
For our sermon series, we will join Christians all over the world in walking through the Advent lectionary Psalms. These Psalms teach us how to wait, how to hope, and how to long for the coming King.
In addition, we have provided an Advent Prayer Guide for use Monday through Saturday, whether individually or as families. We suggest you download the PDF, and print pages 4-6 and leave at the dinner table for daily prayer. The guide includes Scripture readings that Christians throughout the world are also walking through during Advent.
We will conclude our keeping of Advent with our annual Advent Feast on December 21st at the Fork and Plow Lavender Farm. If you’re interested in joining us for this event, please RSVP here.
Come prepare your hearts with us. Advent has arrived.
