Three Great Words of Advent
Falling between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Advent maybe a lost season in our culture (and maybe even in our churches beyond “Hanging of the Greens” and the Advent wreath). However, the themes of Advent may make it the most important season of the church year to speak to the struggles of our society. The three great words of Advent describe those themes: wait, expect, and prepare.
1. WAIT- Advent as a season of waiting conflicts with the culture of “having it now”. In a world of instant communication, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year business, and living on credit, we have lost the discipline of waiting. Our faith is in a God who is never in a hurry and finds waiting to be a virtue (“Those who wait up on the Lord . . .”). Often we have to wait on God to work, wait on the solution to problems, wait on people to catch up with where we are trying to lead, wait on change, or wait on understanding. Advent may help us to remember to not rush to giving overly simplistic answers to complicated questions, overreaching in our church or ministry, or rushing in or out of critical relationships. No discipline is more important in the culture in which we are living and doing ministry.
2. EXPECT- Expectation is critical for waiting. Without it we move from waiting to resignation. Expectation is a factor of faith and hope (“faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction not seen”). In pastoral ministry (and in life), circumstances can leave us jaded and living without the critical virtue of expectation. It is expectation that keeps us energized and persevering with anticipation. The ironic thing about the future oriented nature of expectation is that Biblically it is rooted in the past. We live with expectation because the God who was faithful in the past is the God who will not fail in the future. The entire Biblical story offers the gift of expectation by telling the story of the timeless faithfulness of God who holds the future in His hands. Advent is a good time to recapture our lost expectations.
3. PREPARE- Preparation is what we do while we wait with expectation. When we live without waiting, we prepare poorly, if at all, for we rush ahead unprepared. When we live without expectation we don’t prepare, for we don’t believe there is any point in it. Preparation is critical for success in pastoral ministry. To preach, teach, counsel, or administer unprepared is its own kind of preparation; it is preparation to fail. If anything, Advent does lend itself to cultural preparation, everywhere there is a call to prepare for Christmas. But, without waiting and expectation, that preparation is more about superficial things than matters of the heart and mind.
This Advent consider focusing some attention of the themes of Advent both personally and in your congregations. They might just change the way we are living in the world and serving in the church.
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