HOPE
A Meditation for the first week of Advent
We begin again this week in the church year, the season starting over again with Advent, those short and dark winter days when the sun sets in some places before 5 p.m.
Advent is a season of candles, of small lights in the darkness, as my car’s headlight beams sweep across the prairie of rural Minnesota as I come home again from church one night.
Advent is a beginning, but it never quite feels like one for me. Instead, it feels more like what it is - the end of the year - a time of great expectation and rampant consumerism and, honestly, a lot of work to do!
Entering into the season of Advent this way is sort of like beginning a race, except you barely got any sleep the night before and you decided to eat eight doughnuts for breakfast. You’re not in it to win it.
Still, again the new church year comes again: every year; starting anew the first Sunday after Thanksgiving this year with a stark reminder that this holiday is not about what I bring to it, but instead about God coming to me, about God being born here on earth in Jesus.
We always begin with hope, the precursor to anything worthwhile and good in our world. I wrote recently about hope in this newsletter, and I quoted the poet Emily Dickinson, that “hope is the thing with feathers …”
I keep thinking about that image as I prepare for this week of hope. I imagine hope as a tiny, weightless gray and white little feather outside my back window, fluttering blithely in the frigid air, drifting to earth while held aloft in an invisible win against the stronger forces of gravity. I think of my own hope, and yours, as that little feather: held aloft in the sky, and lifting us up against all odds. We may feel weak or weary or vulnerable, but against the odds, we are flying anyway. Christmas is coming.
Happy (Church) New Year!
A Few Notes …
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