Advent can seem cruel. We’re invited to delay the full-on embrace of Christmas proper to tarry in this land of Wait. It’s hard terrain. Ask children anticipating Christmas Day, or parents anticipating their children’s success, or the small businessperson totaling up the receipts from Black Friday. We ache with the characters of C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia who discover a cursed land where it’s always winter and never Christmas.
As a companion in this place we have the prophet Jeremiah who worked during one of Judah’s most significant periods of upheaval and transformation. Even so, the prophet dreams of those days, when things will be set right. For Jeremiah that meant the restoration of God’s unfolding promise to mend the entire universe. Justice and righteousness blossoming in the ruins. The country saved and the city made safe.
Each year at this time the dream is rekindled as we hang the lights and light the candles and recommit ourselves to live the dream now as we hope for those days. As did Jeremiah and Jesus and Mary and Elizabeth we have to gear up for the long haul. With Martin Luther King, Jr. we can say, “I may not get there with you…but I have a dream…”
Join us in worship at the Reedville Church for the First Sunday of Advent, Dec. 2. at 9:30. The sermon is “Those Days.” There’ll be Communion, too, with Christmas carols woven into the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving.