The Christian year does not begin with fireworks and champagne. It begins with waiting, one of the most difficult undertakings given to humanity. While the world rushes from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, from one holiday obligation to the next, we are invited to slow down. Maybe even required to. This is countercultural in the truest sense: the culture says go, do, buy, hurry. The church says wait. Be still. Pay attention.
Advent comes from the Latin adventus: coming, arrival. Yes, this is about remembering that Jesus came two thousand years ago, but it is about cultivating a heart that can receive him now. Let every heart prepare Him room.
And here is where it cuts: You cannot make room for God if you do not make room for God’s people. The two go together. Always. We cannot say we have room for God while we have no room for our neighbor. The question “Is there room?” is not just about my heart and Jesus. It is about my heart and the stranger, the difficult one, the one I would rather not make space for. Advent relocates itself from private piety to something unavoidably communal, relational. The inn had no room because the world was too busy attending to its own concerns. God slipped in through the back, among the animals, to an unwed teenage mother far from home.So we move through these Advent days practicing, breathing, listening, making room…for God and for God’s people.