Advent

Advent. It’s basically synonymous with waiting, right? As a kid, it meant candy every day, as well as some other miscellaneous activity; for much of my adult life, it has meant stress, decisions, and crowds. At both times, it meant waiting and preparing, with varying degrees of anticipation and dread, for the “main event”, for Christmas morning. For the last few years, though, I’ve gotten a better handle on the stress points (read: eliminated them by choosing to not participate in stressful things, as much as possible), and instead of fatigue and dread, the Advent season has become one of peace and calm. One thing that’s been particularly impactful for me has been a shift in focus, from Jesus’ first advent, God-became-man-and-dwelt-among-us – the implications and importance of which I still don’t fully grasp – to the promised hope of His much anticipated second advent, when He returns to judge, to reign, and to resurrect. 

A thrill of hope, that what is will not always be. The relationships, strained and broken, the everyday living reminders of life in a sinful and broken world, will one day be renewed and restored. The heartaches of today will no longer be painful, and the former things, though perhaps they may come to mind, will lose their current bitterness and will hold only sweetness of the goodness of God. That is the thrill of hope that Advent brings. And in a strange turn (to human thinking anyway), the hope is the same for both the wounded and the wounder, both the betrayed and the betrayer: He who makes all things new will come again.

Really, it is a continuation of the hope that the people of old, the men and women who followed the Lord in the Old Testament, held: the thrill of hope for the arrival of the Seed who would cure the curse. And although that Offspring has arrived, and rescued us from the power and penalty of saying, yet we still await rescue from the presence of sin. So we too wait, with a thrill of hope. 

To that end, over the next few weeks, I intend to use this space to share one thing that continues to help me call to mind the truth and hope of that for which we’re waiting: Handel’s Messiah. It’s helpfully broken up into three parts already, so for each of the next three weeks, I’ll share the Biblical texts that comprise the libretto of that unparalleled work. You can watch/listen to the entire piece here, and if all goes well, my posts will include the relevant timestamp to accompany each passage.