advent

i have been meaning to post about advent for some time. well, really just since it started. so in the perfect blogging world i would have posted 9 days ago on this. i didn't post right away though because i wanted to give advent its due. growing up advent meant christmas was close, like really close. i knew once those purple banners started being walked down to aisle on sunday morning that my christmas list should already be passed to my mom and that soon we would have a break from school and that i would get to see my family and that it was just a great time of year. none of that is a bad thing (well, besides the shallow consumeristic desires of my childhood christmas lists, but that is a whole other post in and of itself), but none of it really had anything to do with advent. for me advent equaled almost christmas. which, isn't necessarily wrong, but it isn't necessarily right. the last couple years my understanding, or rather my desire to understand advent has grown. i no longer look past it to christmas, but i want to recognize it and learn from and thus perhaps my christmas experience will carry the significance that it is worthy of. i want to spend at least a few posts on the topic of advent because this will enable me to continue to learn more and will remind me to continue to prepare for christmas.

i have learned a lot in my initial readings about advent. some good basics like advent is latin for 'to come.' and how the candles mean different things in different traditions, but some of the basics are christ is the light of the world, expectation/joy, and christ is the prince of peace. one thing that i thought was interesting was this kind of debate as advent became more recognized as to whether it was a season of penitence and fasting or anticipation and hope or celebration. i guess people didn't really want two lents so they felt the had to throw a little anticipation and hope in the mix. in reflecting on it a bit i think it is good it is all these dynamics. with advent being the first season of the church calendar, it is (obviously) the beginning of the church year. this got me thinking of the beginnings of people's spiritual journeys. so often the beginning is all about recognizing a need. for our own personal faith story we start out with the realization that we need a savior to come and reconcile us to God. as a church we also realize we need Christ. its good that every year the church starts out knowing that Christ has come and that we don't have it all figured out and that he is coming again. because he will some day come and fully redeem this world. so why shouldn't this be a complex season with feelings of penitence, hope, AND celebration. christ's incarnation was a big deal. huge. i really think we aren't humanly able to even approach an understanding of all its implications. but i don't want to get ahead of myself, it's not quite christmas yet. the sole reminder of beginnings and how much we needed and now very much still need a savior and how the feelings of penitence, hope, and celebration all tie into that will keep me thinking for some time.