We are entering the season of Advent. I feel like, sometimes, in our rush toward Christmas; the hustle and bustle of gift giving and making memories and carrying out traditions and reveling in the revelry and lights and glitter we miss the radical nature of Advent. 

(This isn’t me being the liturgical police, not really. In a world that’s as stressful as this one if you need to revel and put up some lights to feel better you should do it!)

I personally am drawn to seasons like Advent (and Lent). The quiet seasons. The ones that seem to take place under the cover of darkness. The ones that ask us to confront the hard, the lonely, the grief. 

Advent is a season of waiting. It’s an acknowledgement of the reality that the world is not how it should be. There is war. There is violence. There is genocide. There is fear. There are kids who don’t feel safe at home. There is a lack of health care. There is… there is… there is… We can all fill in those blanks with a million things that aren’t right. 

We wait for a savior. For someone to come and rescue us. We wait for the breaking in of hope. We wait for change. 

And yet, part of the Christian story is that change has already started and the invitation is for us to stop waiting and get to work. Stop waiting for someone else to save us. Stop waiting for the government to do their jobs. Stop waiting for people to put down their weapons. Stop waiting for transphobes to come to their senses. 

Stop waiting and build the world we long for. 

We do what we can, with what we have, right where we are. And sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s enough to turn the tide (and sometimes it isn’t) but we don’t quit. We don’t give up hope because we know that together we can something.

What is your something? What are you going to do this month, this week, this day to make where you are a little better? 

May we, in this season of waiting, refuse to just wait. May we refuse to expect outside salvation. May we work together to build a better and more just world.