The last Sunday of November closes out the Thanksgiving holiday. Many of us will be driving home in heavy traffic, our stomachs heavy with our Thanksgiving feasts and our hearts heavy at the prospect of starting another work week. But that last gasp of a delicious four-day weekend is also the start of something else this year: It is the first Sunday of Advent.
The four Sundays of Advent lead up to the religious celebration of Christmas. For Christians, the Advent season is a time to ready our souls for the coming of the Christ child, the holy incarnation of God dwelling among us. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths,” John the Baptist cries out to us. (Mark 1:3)
And everyone, observant or not, is consumed with the secular considerations of preparing our homes and hearts for the holiday ahead. We are decorating, baking and shopping. We are hanging lights, wrapping gifts and mailing cards. We are attending parties, making up the guest rooms, and reaching our spending limits. Our traditions are wonderfully alive for another year.
Advent signifies a time of waiting, of anticipating, of expecting. But once Christmas arrives and the festivities are done, what happens next? What are we awaiting in the new year? There’s the mystery. We don’t know. We don’t know what 2023 holds for us. We are living in the Advent of something, but we don’t know what.
I think of the blessings and challenges, the joys and sorrows, the gains and losses of the past year. Last Advent, I didn’t know what this year would bring. As I look backward over 2022, I can list the things that I had no idea were coming, that I had no idea I was waiting for. Certainly I had expectations for the new year, as I do for this coming year, but a quick check reminds me that I am not in control of whatever is heading my way. Only God is. I could not have predicted the events of the past year, much less what lies ahead. Only God knows.
And that is the essence of faith, to peer into the clouds of an unknown future and to trust that, at this time next year, we will have weathered the existential storms; to believe that, no matter what may befall us in the coming year, we will discern that God is with us, that God never abandons us, that God will hold us close. During this Advent of something, we can try to clear away the useless stuff that clutters our lives and concentrate on the things that matter, our families, our communities, our work, our callings, our commitments, our care for others.
Just as Advent begins a new liturgical year, we can start afresh on our goals. We can reset our priorities to be kinder, more loving, more compassionate, more generous, more aware of the ways we might make the world a better place. We don’t yet know how we will be called to use our gifts this coming year, but we can make ourselves ready to answer all that may be asked of us.
The year 2022 brought my family the birth of a grandchild and the death of a loved one, joyful gatherings and difficult choices, health challenges and big moves. This Advent gives us no inkling of the somethings that lie ahead in our lives, and that is as it should be. That is the mystery of life. That is the journey that brings us ever closer home.
During the Advent of something, we wait. We look ahead. We give thanks for our blessings. We know that whatever happens, we are in good and loving hands. We are ready.
Email contributing columnist Valerie Schultz at vschultz22@gmail.com. The views expressed here are her own.
