Advent 1: Hope

Today is Advent Sunday 1.  I love Advent.  It is a season of active waiting for God's return.  It's interesting that Christianity places Advent just before Christmas.  We await for the second coming right before and while reenacting the initial birth of the Christ child.

What I love about advent is that it is the only season we have throughout the year in Christianity that has intentional weekly themes.  I like nicely organized themes.  They are:

Advent 1: Hope
Advent 2: The Way of the Prophets
Advent 3: Gaudete Sunday/Joy
Advent 4: Angels

Of course, I always know people have a good time with my name at this point of the year due to the song O Come, O Come Emmanuel.  It is one of my favorite songs.  It has a lot more verses than people think it does.  To me, it follows the Way of the Prophets more than any of the other hymns that we have at any other point of the year.  I also love Advent because people of multiple faiths are all in a waiting period for the Messiah at the same time.

My favorite week is Sunday 2.  Interestingly enough, it is about patience and suffering.  It is all about abiding in Christ regardless of what happens.  It is the message within Christianity that I think is more confused than any other message that the church places in the world.  Abiding and knowing that God is God does not mean that people need to cause more suffering in order to train others to persevere through long-suffering.  There is enough suffering in the world that human beings create and live through that no one really needs to cause more.  We do and the second week in advent shows us that we don't need to do so.

The first week that we are in right now is about hope.  We hope for the future.  The entire season of Advent is placed in hope that the Messiah is coming for all people.  My advent discipline this year is founded in hope.  I am using this season to send in a poem or group of poems to total the amount of days in the season in for review and hopeful publication.  This will sow seeds of hope for the future, pave a way for my writing, bring joy to those whom know me and myself, and may even need some divine intervention and aid.  Publication, like the Messiah, is a discipline of watching and waiting.

Stay Awake!