Advent begins on Sunday! While most of the world counts “shopping days until Christmas,” in church circles we count four Sundays in Advent until Christmas Day. So what is Advent?
Advent means ‘coming’ because we are waiting for the coming of the Christ child. Oddly enough, the scripture readings for three of these four Sundays are about judgment and the second coming of Jesus. The idea is to prepare for the second coming while we anticipate celebrating the first coming in the birth of Jesus.
Our colour for the Advent season is purple, a symbol of our kingly Jesus. Or, blue can be used, a colour that represents Mary. And yet, on the third Sunday, we have the choice of pink, a colour of rejoicing. In the midst of the somber readings we have a break with a Sunday of joy. Again, oddly, from the 4th century, advent was seen as a time of fasting and penitence. Dancing was forbidden!
Whatever the background or traditions, on Sunday at Beach you will see an advent wreath symbolizing the eternal cycle of the seasons with four colour candles, one for each Sunday, and one white Christ candle for Christmas day.
Whether we believe in a first or second coming of Christ, we are waiting with anticipation for a renewed spirit of hope, peace, joy, and love. In the words of poet Cheryl Lawrie, let us have faith that all these spiritual gifts will come.
Pregnant pause
Perhaps our mistake is thinking
that love will always come
in the shape we have known it:
a happy ending
a new beginning
a christ-child.
In this pregnant pause
while the earth holds its breath
waiting for what
it does not know,
let us have the faith
that even we,
with all our wise
and cynical
knowing,
would not imagine
the shape that love
will take
and instead just
have the faith
that it will come.
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