This past summer I asked some wonderful people to write a post for my blog. It was an awesome project and I loved it so much I wanted to do it again. As I considered how this could happen, it came to me—Advent!

Advent: the coming or arrival of something extremely important

The weeks leading up to Christmas each have themes, sometimes they vary depending on who you read or ask, but we are going with these:

Week One: Hope

Week Two: Preparation

Week Three: Joy

Week Four: Love

I asked an amazing array of people if they would write an Advent thought on one of these themes. I’ll be honest, as I sent the email, insecurity flushed over me. It was quickly erased, however, with the immediate response of several people expressing resounding YES’s! My first thought was, “People are cool.”

[So to those of you who said yes and are writing for us, thank you.]

For all of us reading—here is the plan. Each Sunday I will post an introductory post for the week’s theme. Then throughout the week, there will be posts about that theme. The purpose is for all of us to actually engage with the Advent season, understanding the depth and meaning of what it is actually about. It is a way to slow down and contemplate why we have this time of year and where this all came from. It will start this Sunday and take us all the way through Christmas day.

I encourage you to sign-up in the link at the top right to get these posts in your email. (It will just be easier for you, trust me.)

I also want to challenge you to comment – interact – commune with one another in this season. These themes dare us to live bigger, fuller, more meaningful lives – with knowledge of what Christ’s birth and life mean to us.

To kick us off and help us get the deeper picture of Advent, here are some thoughts of mine on life, the waiting, and the anticipation of it all.

I really thought my life would be figured out by now.
Maybe I need to accept it for what it is—Mystery.

I am waiting on so much; so many answers.

Meanwhile, the sun comes up and goes back down and I am too busy worrying to notice or enjoy what is going on around me. I am still so bad at being.here.now.

 I’m listening to “The Time Traveler’s Wife” on audio right now, and all he wants is to be here now. He knows and sees the future, he can go back and experience the past. Yet all he wants, all he asks his doctor for, is a way to stay in the present. The “here and now.”

Life is waiting. We live in waiting for Jesus to come back.

Again: 

Advent: the coming or arrival of something extremely important

The anticipation. We were designed for a different world, a different life. That is why things here are hard and often feel like they do not make sense or fit together.

In the time of Jesus’ birth, the world was in need of a Savior. And He came.

In our world today, we are desperate for a Savior. He came—and He is coming again!

We live in the waiting. The Advent of a better world, a better life. Let us engage in this season with hope, preparation, joy, and love; trusting that God’s presence here with us now will keep us until the glorious day when He returns to redeem us and make all things new.