Advent Isn't Idle
This Advent season, I am praying for imagination. When I was younger, Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas, was all about waiting. As a child, I could experience the ache and excitement of waiting in a way I rarely do as an adult. The pain of waiting for Christmas has to do with how slowly time seems to move for younger folks. Christmas seemed like this magical, miraculous, perfect day that stood before me, just out of reach. I longed for presents, for family members I hadn’t seen all year, for my favorite songs, foods, and candy.
Before I could say the word “incarnation,” my body and soul sensed the relevance that the birth of Jesus would have for my life. As a child, I endured the painful waiting for Christmas because I knew I was holding out for something good. And yes, part of that was about presents and candy-canes, but it was also about that coveted ‘Christmas spirit,’ the spirit of ‘God with us’ that is accessible to Christians in a special way on Christmas.
The excitement of waiting also has to do with the thrill of preparation. During Advent, we don’t idly wait; we prepare. In our family, we light candles, sing songs, pull decorations out of storage, buy or make gifts for loved ones, and pick out a tree and lug it up three flights of stairs into our overcrowded New York City apartment. Christmas would be nothing without the preparations.
When I was little, I started thinking about Christmas in August when my mother would take me to tag sales where I could begin to collect gifts for my friends and family. As the weather outside got colder, I began to think about Christmas more and more, and by the start of Advent, Christmas was all I thought about, 100% of the time.
As we get older and come to know the complex realities of the world firsthand, it’s hard to hold onto a prolonged “Christmas spirit.” Unfettered joy and focused longing must make room for questions, doubts, and the witness of injustice. As adults, we have a hard time experiencing the excitement of awaiting the baby Jesus his message of hope because we have to deal with the fact that the Christian Messiah came and the world is still hard. We know that the birth of Jesus didn’t rid the world of oppression, poverty, and sickness. We know that Christmas is not a perfect day, as we might have believed when we were young.
But the reason I celebrate Christmas is that I treasure the opportunity to marvel, with a pure heart, at the magnificent creation scheme of my God. I treasure the experience to wait for a miracle, the joy of new life and new beginnings, and the hope of eternal restoration that began on Christmas day. I treasure this regardless of the real-life struggles I’ve encountered.
This Advent, I am praying for the burning excitement I felt in my heart as a little girl. I am praying that I will have the energy to prepare my soul for the arrival of our baby Christ, that I will have the devotion and single-mindedness of a six-year-old. I am praying that God will grant me the mind to imagine, as I did when I was a child, that Jesus will be born for the first time on Christmas day. And as I grow into that child-like imagination, I hope that God will give me eyes to see the potential for a new society—a reality that lives up to my greatest hopes for a transformed, resurrected world.
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