ADVENTure

“Out of the Darkness, Into the Light: The Time before Christmas is the Time of Light and mutual Love.”― Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann, 24 Days Until Christmas: 24 Christmas Poems

“God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people. God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof. Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be. There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety—that is where he wants to be, and no one can keep him from it. Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.”― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

Expectancy.
Possibility.
A tough gritty hope.
Waiting.
Preparing.
More waiting.
Pushing.
Pulling.
Sitting silent.
A softening.
A wide-open field.
An invitation for all, not some.
Light in darkness.
A warm embrace.
Never giving up or giving in.
Persistent.
Resilient.
Beyond all comprehension.
May the season of Advent, of hope, anticipation, waiting, grace, overwhelming love overtake you with peace, wonder, joy and awe.

“The message of Advent doesn’t fit neatly into a sound-bite or vignette. It’s too complex, too deep, to compete with glitter and noise; and it’s a hard sell in a culture that would rather skip straight to the big finish. But Advent is too important to be forgotten, because it is this season that prepares us to encounter our Lord.”― Kerry van der Vinne, Advent: Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room