Once again, Advent is coming to an end and I feel like I didn’t quite do it right.  That’s mostly normal for me.  This year I had hoped to blog my way through one of my favorite books in 2023: Andrew Root’s When Church Stops Working.  That didn’t happen, though I hope to do it soon.

This is the shortest possible Advent season you could have.  Most of the time, Advent starts the Sunday after Thanksgiving; that was not the case this year.  So the final Sunday of Advent is tomorrow, and Christmas is the next day.  Maybe I could blame my lack of productivity on having one week less to work?  I probably shouldn’t.

Let me say this for now.  Advent is a season about waiting, about (hopeful) anticipation.  I put hopeful in parentheses there because to live in hope is to live with a certain amount of lack, of having-not.  Advent is about remembering the waiting of the Incarnation of Jesus so we can better wait for His final return.  So something parenthetical is appropriate.  But it also points to an interesting tension: we are waiting for a God who is also already here.  Not in an incarnational way, obviously.  Jesus entered into time and then exited it with His ascension.  But the Spirit is present with us still.  We aren’t in Old Testament times, when the Spirit seemed occasionally present in specific situations.  I think too often we live like that practically, though.  And that’s worth thinking about this holiday season, as Advent turns to Christmas and beyond.