Dear PPPC –

Advent begins on Sunday.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel fully ready for it this year. Am I ready for a season of waiting? Are you? Are you ready for a season of preparation in your spiritual life? Are you ready for the familiar Advent scriptures to offer new and living words for your life right now?

Life is messy. But here’s the truth: God meets us here, right in the mess of real life. That’s what Advent and Christmas are all about. That’s what our faith, is all about.

Christmas is still four weeks away – we begin this brand new year in the Christian Church calendar with the season of Advent. Advent is a Latin word that literally means “coming” or “arrival.” Advent is when Christians all over the world observe a season of waiting and preparation, usually centered around weekly themes of hope, peace, joy, and love. This is the Church’s way of observing and remembering, of marking the truth we believe that God came to be with us once, and God is still with us, and God is coming again to set all things right.

So here are two things for you to be intentional about this Advent…whether your life feels messy or calm, or somewhere in between.

The first is this: I strongly encourage you, come to worship during Advent. Not for the choir, or the decorations, or the cookie exchange, or the preaching, but for worship. Come to worship God, God who meets us right in the mess of real life. Come to worship God, God who is with us while we wait for that for which we yearn most deeply. Come to worship God, and encounter other believers, a community of faith, that waits and works together.

The second is this: Find a candle….and then find a time to light it each day throughout this season. It doesn’t have to be fancy, or smell like fraser fir or cranberries. It doesn’t even have to be a real candle, it can be electronic. But find a candle, place it on your coffee table or mantle, someplace safe. And for the next four weeks, find a time each day to light it (or turn it on). Maybe it’s as you do your daily devotional or offer your daily prayers. Maybe as you light it, you take a minute of silence, a moment of silence in a world that can’t stop making noise. Maybe as you light it, you offer those familiar words from the first chapter of the gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Just a couple of minutes, every day, to pay attention. A few minutes, every day, to remember that God came to be with us once, and God is still with us, and God is coming again to set all things right.

In the name of the one who taught us to love one another,
Pastor Molly