Happy Friday, everyone!
The season of Advent begins this Sunday, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Can I tell you when I first fell in love with Advent?
(I’m going to do it anyway.)
When I was a kid (9 or 10 maybe) during a Sunday service in December at my happy-clappy charismatic church, my dad—musically trained and Lutheran by upbringing—got up in front of everyone at the offertory and belted out O Come O Come Emmanuel. A capella. To an astonished crowd of 500 or so folks.
This was strange. And beautiful.
You see, we didn’t tend to do songs like that. Mostly camp-meetingy tunes and Jewish-sounded ballads to keep us charged up.
But Gregorian-chant-esque laments? No. Never.
And yet, doggonnit, that song was the perfect song for the moment. It released something in the house. I remember being so thoroughly entranced by it—by the haunting minor chords resolving into towering majors; by the desperate pleas transfigured by the hope of Emmanuel’s coming.
I’ll absolutely never forget that Sunday. And I do think that that experience laid the groundwork for what later became a deep sojourn into the observance of the Church Year as a spiritually formative practice, which I’ve been at for 20 years now.
So when the first Sunday of Advent rolls around, I get really excited. God is coming… I think. And who knows what he will do?
In that spirit, I wrote up an Advent meditation which my dear friends at Missio Alliance posted today. (Click the link above.) Give it a read when you have a few minutes. I think you’ll be blessed by it.
Andrew
(PS—The piece is an adaptation from my doctoral project; so you can regard it as a bit of a sneak-preview.)
(PPS—If you don’t have a place to worship/observe Advent this December, join us Sundays at New Life East: 10am at Grand Peak Academy.)
Wonderful, Andrew. Congrats on the doctoral work!