Advent is the period in the Christian calendar that begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and culminates in the celebration of the birth of Christ on the day we call Christmas. Advent is a holy season of waiting. During these days we reflect, meditate, and prepare our hearts for the coming into the world of the promised Messiah.

   For many, Advent is charged with vivid memories both of joyful celebration and of seasons fraught with heartbreak and despair. From a place of dark shadows, many attempt to deflect the emotions of the season with a kind of spiritual indifference, reluctant to relive those painful experiences of the past engraved on the human heart.

   Whether we approach the season of Advent with anticipation or with the overhang of emotional pain, at this affective time of year, there is within each of us a sense of deep longing for that which seems most elusive in the troubled world in which we live—light, comfort, love, and joy. These are the eternal qualities of God that cannot be bought, borrowed, or appropriated from another. They are gifts of God that live within our soul.

   Whatever our understanding or expectation of Christmas, Advent is a time to look within and listen for the voice of God. In a Christmas sermon from 1928, Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, "The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come."

   What if our journey toward the manger were not an exhausting daily slog through the traditions and secular rituals of the Christmas season but rather an active quest for something richer and deeper that adds meaning and depth to our spiritual understanding both of God and of ourself? What if Advent were about seeking and claiming all that sparks our spiritual imagination, inspires our heart, and floods our soul with the assurance that God is present to us in Jesus Christ?

   The questions of Advent are as many and varied as each human being, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” (Isaiah 40:21). “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:12). What do we seek and hope to find during the days of Advent?

   The questions of Advent are answered when our journey leads us into a singular experience of the love of God manifest to us through Christ. The questions of Advent are answered when we know at last what it means to celebrate Christmas because we have entered into the heart and very being of Christ.

   Whether we are surrounded by family, or find ourself alone, our Advent journey inevitably leads us to the manger. What do we imagine we will see or experience when we get there? When at last we arrive, we see a newborn baby, in whose presence we experience Emmanuel, God present to us in the world. Like the shepherds, we can do nothing more and nothing less than kneel with joy, awe, and wonder before the Christ child, the perfect expression of God’s love, the fulfillment of God’s promise for the redemption of humankind, the Savior of the world.

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them.
Luke 2:20