For grade school, high school, and college students, it’s summer break. For university students, it’s final graduation and their entry into the workforce. For driving school attendees, it’s the driver’s license. For expectant mothers and fathers, it’s the birth of the baby. The waiting period for all of these wait-ers, is over. The time of hoping has reached its end. The hoped-for ‘thing’ is now present. A whole new series of experiences, and new hopes, now begins.
For those of us who have celebrated, once again, the beautiful season of Advent, the symbolic waiting is almost over. Tomorrow, the ancient longing of God’s people comes to fruition as we turn the page and finally get to celebrate the arrival of ‘him whom our hearts have long desired.’ It will be Christmas! True, in the present tense, celebrating! It will be a new day.
Families have been longing for the traditional elements of these days, as well as for the individual family traditions. Lots of people will be driving and/or flying to get to be with family and friends. Grandparents, half-starved from the terrible distance keeping them from their grandbabies, will be able to hold these precious young lives in their arms (digital pics are OK, but . . .). Even those with a dread of this seasonal displacement are girding up their loins to brave the roads and the skies.
So, of what has Advent 2025 consisted? First, a time of hope-filled waiting. We entered this season with stark, global realities facing us. Economist Adam Tooze says that ‘the world is in a state of poly-crisis in which interconnected catastrophes – geopolitical, environmental, economic, medical and military, are increasingly converging to complicate, exacerbate and accentuate one another’ (Lectio 365, Advent Week 4, Day 6). And we, with tenacity, still wait with glowing hope. We chose to respond with courageous peacemaking, loving friends and family members, even those hard to love, and daring, in obedience, to be non-judgmental and loving toward our enemies. In this, we remember that we have just one enemy, and he is not flesh and blood, but spiritual evil. We delved a bit into the subject of resilient joy. Nothing fluffy here, but gutsy, firm-gripped, joy that the world didn’t give to us and therefore can’t take away. Finally, we explored the very un-cool, counter-cultural, self-giving love permanently on display in Jesus (and set forth by him as the way we rest in his love). Strangely, it’s how we love one another that the world will be convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, sent by the Father. I, personally, would rate our little VCP band as an A+ in this final area, with perhaps a bit of work left in the other categories. God is faithful! Happy Advent closure to you! PD