Advent ponderings

I am beginning to truly understand what Advent is. It's marvelous how God is showing me.

It is lovely to be home. I am content to be a full-time sister and daughter again, living at home and taking full advantage of a well-stocked and fully-equipped kitchen to make delicious meals and baked goods. My dog I had unexpectedly missed very much, and I have loved the opportunities to walk him every day for some quality time thinking, exercising, and sometimes talking with an accompanying family member in the frigid fresh air. And of course, in this season, it is a pleasure simply to be where it looks like home and smells like Christmas.

Of course, I didn't feel all these joyful, cozy, comfy, warm, Christmas-y feelings a week and a half ago; I was finishing up final exams, and laboring under the expectations I had for myself. I dreamt of the ability to sleep in my own bed, pined for the sight of my backyard and all its winter-bared trees, and yearned for the hot cocoa by the fire sort of moments with my little sisters. A countdown to the day I flew home conveyed so much hope, so many happy and energizing thoughts, that I was propelled through finals with a diligence and effort that carried me to the degree of success I needed. It made me thankful that I have such a home to which I am able to return. It made me praise God for his faithfulness in providing the means for my education, and my flying and driving halfway across the country to get to it. It made me reflect on all that I had learned in those quick four months that compose a semester.

All that, to me, sounds a little bit like the Advent season, albeit on a less universally important level. What I felt in the present, and then how it would be, and how the switch would be made by one day, one change (in my example, the day of my flight; in the best Example, Christmas Day). Then, I felt anticipation of rest, now, in rest, I remember how God pulled me through a tough transitional semester. Then I felt a seeming hopelessness brought on by finals, where now I have renewed hope. Along with this change or renewal has come a greater desire to reflect in my work the glorious God I am coming to know better through my studies. I appreciate Advent, His coming, much better this year than I ever have, I think due to the double amount of waiting, and looking-forward-to, I experienced between Advent itself and my homecoming.

The most beautiful reentry to life at home was being at church with my family for Lessons & Carols Sunday. On this day every year, there is no sermon; instead the choir and scripture readers lead us through the story of Christ's birth in song and reading. It was beautiful(--shout out to the church choir and its director!). I felt like I had arrived, after making a long spiritual journey mirroring the journey of the magi, one full of anticipation and hope. A journey to realize that I wasn't the one who made the journey at all, but that I was the one Christ passionately journeyed to--here, to where I am, to the fallen, broken, hurting world full of starvation, grief, loneliness, grudges, hatred, and final exams. Suffering immense humility and humiliation (two words that I have now learned originally meant the same thing), God through his Son has shown me in a new way his great love all over again. I don't know if any of this is sensible or comprehensible to anyone else, or if the connection only works for the one who's lived it herself, as sometimes is true. But I believe God continues his loving, caring, fond, affectionate manner of guiding me, just as he always has. Praise God for his faithfulness to his loved ones, his little ones, his sheep.

O come, O come, Emmanuel.