Of darkness and longing... rest, anticipation, and joy...

What ho, one and all! 

Lately I've been busy laying out many and various plots for the upcoming Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany seasons. I've also been feeling the writing itch again so decided to just plop (almost) everything into a blog post. All that to say, here I am back at this dear old cozy corner of the internet with some General Thoughts. 

 

Advent

Advent starts on Sunday, December 3rd this year (which, incidentally, makes for a very short Advent season -- more on that later). Concluding the Ordinary Time of the church calendar, Advent points us to the comings of Christ. It points us to His future coming at the last day, when He comes in awesome power and majesty -- in absolute glory -- with a trump to wake the dead and gather the living -- and when we will see Him as He is. Advent invites us to try and begin to imagine the very edges of what standing in the living, thrice holy presence of our Lord and the Judge of all the earth will even be like. It invites us to reckon our hours and number our days, to be sober minded, to do justice, and to walk humbly with our God. It also beckons and points us towards the absolute piercing joy and bliss of seeing Him. Seeing Him, face to face... an unimaginable intensity of joy. A joy we can experience only if we have been declared righteous. An impossible thing, for we are all sinners, dead and lost, irrevocably. 

So, too, Advent points us back to the very beginning: to the Fall in the garden and also to the protoevangelium -- the very first promise of the coming Savior (spoken simultaneously with words of promised judgment upon Satan, that great serpent of old), the promise that God immediately began bringing to fruition, faithfully, over millennia. Advent reminds us of those early chapters of the great story of redemption, packed with ups and downs and cliff hangers all along the way; and it reminds us of the waiting, the long, prayerful waiting, as the saints of old kept watch over those centuries, longing in the darkness for the coming of the light, for the Promised Son.

Advent then points us to the Incarnation -- it points us to the Son of God taking on human flesh, growing in the womb of His mother (a young girl betrothed to a carpenter and living in a backwater part of Israel, under a Roman Caesar who had declared himself lord of the known world and a living god on earth). And so we can ponder that waiting too -- those final nine months of waiting -- the tension thick, throbbing, palpable.

 

Christmas

And so comes Christmas, when we celebrate the coming of the perfect, eternal Son of God. The Son of God being born.

Since Advent starts on a Sunday and there are always four Sundays in Advent, this means that Christmas comes any time during that fourth week -- sometimes early, sometimes later. It pops up perfectly and always as a surprise. This hop around nature of things is really interesting. Living in the pattern of the church calendar and going through a contemplative, thoughtful period of Advent, Christmas explodes with a shock like a firework, pointing too to the perfect timing and also surprise of the birth of our Savior -- precisely coordinated in God's perfect plan, and an utter shock to the kings of the earth.

Right from the beginning of Genesis, everything is heading toward Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, but every day we mark along the way also has significance in that big picture; and so we celebrate Christmas, the celebration of Christ coming in the flesh, God with us. We celebrate the reality of His flesh -- for only One who is truly man and truly God can provide a propitiation for our sin. And that's what it's all about. He came in pain and weakness that He might die for the sins of His people -- that He might be buried and rise again the third day, declaring Himself with power to be the very Son of God -- saving His people, His bride, and someday, with her, all of creation. And He rose in that body, glorified, beyond our minds to grasp, yet still with the prints of the nails in His hands, hands grown to maturity that Mary must have caught and held close, as a mother does, that very first night.

Christmas is about the Father giving the gift of His son and the Son giving Himself, coming in weakness and thereby entering and exalting His creation, and it's about the Spirit hovering over all of it.

 

Epiphany

After the twelve day festival of Christmas, we come to Epiphany (sometimes extended as an entire season). Either way, hearkening back to the longing through Advent, Epiphany is about the light coming into the darkness. And it's about the beginning of the fulfillment of Psalm 2 -- that the kings of the nations will bow the knee -- which is where the Magi come in, exemplifying and typifying greater things to come. Once again, we see the story of redemption crystallized in the gifts they present to Christ: frankincense, generally understood to point to His divinity; myrrh pointing to His death and burial; and gold pointing to His kingship.

Christ has been manifested to the entire world -- to the Gentiles. He is the perfect Son of Abraham and in His name Gentiles can trust. In Him, Gentiles can be brought near; and now (after His cross, resurrection, and ascension) able to come directly, directly, into the throne room of grace, able to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

 

 

And so Advent through Epiphany catechizes us -- taking us from Genesis 1, in the garden, right through to the coming of Jesus, and pointing us forward to when we will specifically remember His cross, resurrection, and ascension in the future -- inviting us to ponder and dwell on the entire story of salvation, all the twists and turns, darkness and light -- inviting us to ponder on the very character and perfections of our Savior, and of God's love for His people.

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This post turned out longer than expected, so I think I'll split my plans for the season into a second post, hopefully to come soon. Thanks for reading and I'd love to hear your thoughts! ;)