First Monday of Advent
Reflection: Monday, Day 2 of Advent
Waiting is baked into everything.
And yet, it’s never something that we relish doing.
The anticipation of eating a delicious cake is never as good as actually eating it.
Or waiting in a line at the grocery store while grubby small hands tug at you (I realize this isn’t a universal experience except for parents). Or needing to use the restroom when someone is taking FOREVER. Or waiting for a child to develop in the womb, until you finally witness the unfurling of its tiny body into the person he/she is.
So, why do the we suggest making your Advent a month of waiting?
Doesn’t it seem like a weird cultish type of masochism to superimpose a time of waiting when the rest of society revels in sugar-laden goodies? Throughout December, Americans binge on cloying Hallmark movies, hot cocoa, all mint and gingerbread flavored sweets, buying stuff, and buying more stuff, and buying more stuff. Ice skating, parties, merriment. And then Christmas—a smorgasbord of …more stuff and food.
So here’s why: waiting gives you wisdom that you’d never pursue on your own.
If you consciously try to not spend the whole month of December partying, but instead, consider ways to give of yourself that perhaps stretches you, you’ll come to Christmas with a different mindset at the feast. Instead of it being the exchange of the perfect gifts for everyone, it can be a time to receive deep, deep grace and joy and give that to others: to give thanks for songs of joy in the air, to enjoy decadent food as royalty would in celebrating a new king!
“Waiting gives you wisdom that you’d never pursue on your own.”
For so many Christian traditions, the liturgical period of Advent has almost nothing to do with the commercial season of December. And for centuries Christians, who have subsisted on far less luxury than we can ever imagine, gave up essential aspects of their life during both Advent and Lent in order to better feast in two seasons that represent miraculous changes to humanity: God becoming flesh and God saving us from ourselves.
Advent
Activities
Make your Advent wreath! It’s actually more simple than you think. We use store bought floral wire and clippings from your yard. It comes out differently each year!
When you’re waiting on something today, thank God for it.
Consider something you want to fast from for the next four weeks: maybe its social media, maybe its decadent eating, maybe it’s gloomy thoughts.
Taken from the daily office
Daily Scripture & Prayer
First Lesson: Sirach 9
Second Lesson: Acts 22:23–23:11
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Literature
Scott Cairns “Early Frost”
This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.
They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.
The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.
I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed.
Advent Song
Young Oceans “Come to us O Lord”
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