The thing about Advent is that is seems to let us off the hook. Christmas takes over before we've done anything about it. We leave all that incarnation stuff to God anyway: justice, peace, renewal, transformation. That's the thing about Advent, we wash our hands of the whole change thing and pass it over to God to sort out as if we've misheard what the prophets is meaning. We've been offered great visions and think we've to let God get on with it while we party and then we wonder why the world hasn't changed by Boxing Day.
The thing about Advent is we imagine it is a time of waiting. What, like chairs round the wall in a residential home? Or a doctor's surgery? Or in the queue to get your flu' jag? The thing about Advent is that is isn't about waiting at all. It's about choosing. The prophets have been holding up this vision for us for millennia now and we pay it lip service thinking we can wait for God to do something about it while we're pulling crackers but really it's the prophets who are waiting for us to choose to go with the vision and belong to it's fulfilment.
The thing about Advent is, it is a time when we are done with waiting and we now have to do the choosing. It's God whos is waiting for us, to decide: the prophet's vision or exactly the same as last year.
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