This week, we were invited to build and create our own Advent wreath. Our five-year-old make a plan for how the wreath would look and created a pattern with the berries. Our nine-year-old decided that it didn’t matter what order the greenery was in because it was all going to be below the candles.
As I watched them create together, I realized that sometimes in the message of Advent to “watch and wait,” seems like a passive instruction. Just sit still and the light will come. Prepare your hearts by not hurrying through the season or being consumed by the consumerism of the cultural aspect of Christmas. All things that are seemingly impossible to do with the school programs, spirit days, and less and less light to depend on each day.
But living Advent isn’t passive at all. Watching and waiting is perhaps the most active call we are given. Watching and waiting means looking at our surroundings not once, but again and again with the kin-dom eyes. Was that a glimmer, a whisper of the Divine that just passed through? Was that a blink, a light beginning to shine in the dark world?
Living Advent means creating space and sanctuary for the Light of the World to come again. For so many this year, living Advent will take white-knuckled hope that their situation will change and their oppression and suffering will cease. Living Advent means that we want all to have food, all to have shelter, all to have clothes, and all to be able to see the Light of the World come again.