Advent: Waiting For Light

Pastor James Poinsett

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” says the prophet Isaiah. 

This quote is from one of the texts we will be focusing on in worship during the season of Advent. I believe the spirit of hopeful expectation in this quote captures the joyous sense of preparation we share in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

The word Advent means “coming” or “arrival.” The focus of the Advent season is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ in his first Advent. And it also points to the promise that God will continue to come to us again and again. Advent is far more than simply marking a 2,000-year-old event in history – it is a celebration of the truth about God.

Advent is marked by a spirit of hopeful expectation, of anticipation, of preparation. In its double focus on past and future, Advent also symbolizes the spiritual journey of each of us as individuals and as a congregation. We affirm the hope once anticipated that Christ has come, and we anticipate anew the ways God will be revealed among us in the coming year.

This time of hopeful expectation and preparation is marked by waiting. Advent serves as a reminder both of the original waiting by Israelites for the birth of the Messiah, and the waiting by Christians for the fulfillment of God’s promises. Our theme as we journey through this Advent season is “Waiting for the Light.” Through our worship and work we will be watching for the signs of God’s light in our world, and actively anticipating the light of Christ to enter our lives in a new way.

Advent is about hope. It is not just hope for a better day or hope for the lessening of pain and suffering, although that is certainly a significant part of it. Advent is more about hope that we have meaning and possibility beyond our present circumstances, a hope that the limits of our lives are not nearly as narrow as we experience them to be. It is not that we have possibility in ourselves, but that God is a God of new things and so all things are possible.

If our hope is only in our circumstances, as we define them to be good or as we want them to be to make us happy, we will always be disappointed. That is why we hope, not in circumstances, but in God. God has continually been revealed to be a God of newness, of possibility, of redemption, the recovery or transformation of possibility from endings that goes beyond what we think or imagine.

Yet, it all begins with the hope that the light of God will once again shine to reveal new things and new possibilities. This time of year we contemplate that hope embodied in a newborn baby, the perfect example of newness and potential. During Advent, we pray for that newness with the hopeful expectation, indeed the faith, that God will once again be faithful to see our circumstances, to hear our cries, know our longings for whole lives, for a stronger church, and for a better world.

Let us journey through Advent together as a church family with the hope that continues to prepare us to see possibility, and with the faith that prepares us for the day when God will once again fulfill promises made.