Anyone else feel like there’s a tendency to whitewash Christmas and the Advent season? The typical sentiments – merry and bright, the happiest time of the year, etc – often come across as marshmallow fluff, sickly saccharine and lacking any kind of nourishment or depth. Even the churchy nativity scenes are sanitized; of course there’s…
Tag: Advent
Light Dawns
The idea of “signs” generally makes me uncomfortable. Not street signs, or any other kind of wayfinding, those of course are quite welcome! The concept of some kind of occurrence being interpreted as a sign for what action I am to take or how I am to proceed seems a little suspect at best. Do…
Advent Reading Recommendations
What are you reading during Advent this year? What’s your standard practice? Do you read any special Advent book, or follow any sort of blog/newsletter? I haven’t for most of my life; it’s only in the most recent years that I’ve read anything out of the ordinary for Advent. A major part of that is…
Four Things I’ve Been Loving Lately
This book: The Weary World Rejoices, edited by Melissa Kruger and published by The Gospel Coalition. Yes, it’s for Advent, and I do realize that season is over until next winter, but I’m going to talk about it now because it’s never too early to start planning ahead. It brought a depth of meaning to…
A Different Take on Joy
“Secular Christmas, with its enthusiastic sparkles, dumps us into the cold gray of January. Christian joy is much weightier, more durable”.* Whew. Fitting indeed is the Lord’s timing, governing just precisely which day and at which time on that day I would read that particular entry in the Advent book I chose – almost on…
Advent’s Longing
As we’ve turned the corner after Thanksgiving and are careening towards Christmas and the beginning of the new year, I wanted to take some time to think through the longing of Advent as specifically seen and expressed in “O Come O Come Emmanuel” (which is arguably the best traditional Christmas song that exists). In our…
Messiah, Part 3
This Advent season, I’m running a series of the text (libretto) to Messiah by George Frederic Handel. You’ll find below the biblical text (King James Version, of course) used in Part 3, whose theme is “A Hymn of Thanksgiving for the final overthrow of Death”, broken up by musical section according to the 1959 Novello…
Messiah, Part 1
As I mentioned last week, this Advent season I’m running a series of the text (libretto) to Messiah by George Frederic Handel. You’ll find below the biblical text (King James Version, of course) used in Part 1, whose theme is “The prophecy and realization of God’s plan to redeem mankind by the coming of the…
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…