Advent
Each year, for the four weeks leading up to Christmas, Wayfare editors curate content around four traditional Advent themes: hope, peace, joy, and love. You can find links to these offerings below, along with our thoughts on the meaning of the Advent season, and meditations for Christmas Eve by Tyler Johnson.
To submit Advent-related work to be considered for publication, please see our call for submissions below.
Wayfare Advent Submissions
Wayfare seeks personal essays; art; poetry; reflections on film, scripture, art, music; prayers; practices; short fiction; profiles and more for our Advent series.
What is Advent?
Come, Lord Jesus
At my children’s episcopal play group, Mother Nora carefully arranges four dark blue blocks next to two white ones in the circle of the church year, each block representing one week. “Advent,” she explains, “is the time for getting ready for the Mystery of Christmas.”
Good Tidings of Great Joy
When I was very young and living in East Germany, Christmas in our family began four weeks before Christmas Eve with the beginning of Advent. We made a fresh cut wreath from a fir or a spruce and put four candles on top of it and placed it on our kitchen table.
Advent 1: Hope
A Thrill of Hope
This summer, I kept noticing dead birds of prey on the side of the highway. I live in a semi-rural area, but many of what once were cornfields are now being bulldozed into quick-build subdivisions. I still see owls swooping across the road if I drive home in the dark, and on the way to school, my children love to point out a red-tailed hawk diving into the pumpkin patch across the street to strike, emerging from the brush moments later with a vole in its talons.
Choosing Hope
Christmas is not only, and maybe not even especially, for the happy, the cheerful, the lucky. Christmas is most of all for those who know, deeply, that we dwell in darkness and still look for the light we hope will come.
A Careful Mending of the World
Wave upon wave of crashing sorrows continue. Darkness and brokenness persist. And so too does our call to “do with might” the many acts of repair ahead of us, as we participate in the holy work of creating a world that is whole.
“Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”
Advent 2: Peace
The Peace We Need
What did the heavenly hosts have in mind when they proclaimed “Peace on Earth” to the shepherds?
His Gospel is Peace
Fear not.
When I think of the Christmas story, that divine phrase stands out in my mind. I hear it in Linus’s voice as he tells Charlie Brown “what Christmas is all about,” and recalls the angelic visitation to the shepherds. I remember that phrase intoned by my grandfather as he read the Christmas story from the Bible, while his children and grandchildren acted out the scenes with bathrobes and headbands.
Building Peace
“On earth peace, good will toward men,” sang angels hovering over a land heaving with political and racial tension, ruled by a degenerate despot, choked by Roman oppression, crowded in on all sides by competing foreign powers—a land, which in just one generation would collapse under revolt, its temple razed to the ground.
Advent 3: Joy
Sweet Hymns of Joy
If you and I were collaborating to set up an ideal backdrop for Christmas joy, here are my first thoughts: we start with the enticing smell of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, perhaps from hot cider or cookies just coming out of the oven. Fresh greenery wraps around the banister, giving off the spicy, resinous scent of a winter forest. Next, some temperature contrast: warmth from a crackling fire is answered by a chill breeze swirling around the ankles as dear friends come through the front door, which can’t be shut right away because hugging everyone must happen first, this minute.
Finding Joy
There is a moment in teaching piano when a young student, either on their own or with some guidance from me, realizes that a small bit of rhythmic variation to a descending scale produces the melody “Joy to the World.” The look of surprised recognition that crosses their face is a joy to behold. Right there, grounded in the daily grind of mundane piano practice, is the opening line of a melody that connects to a world of musical possibility and beauty.
Breaking My Face
To choose joy is not to live in blindness to the anguish of human suffering, but it is to determine not to be undone by the pain that abounds and to strive to see the golden thread of beauty that persists in our darkness.
Advent 4: Love
His Law is Love
Two months before Christmas, I miscarried. We think we can plan our families, reverse engineer that ideal June due date, conceive exactly when we want. But that doesn’t happen for everyone, and it didn’t happen for me.
Cultivating Love
One year ago, my husband Josh and I moved from Boston to rural Idaho with our kids and a few suitcases. We had just won back custody of our children two weeks earlier. Back in July, a false child abuse allegation had culminated in a pounding at the door at 1:00 a.m. Armed police officers and CPS social workers had come to take our infant and three-year-old sons from their beds and place them in foster care.
The Delight of Difference
Last winter, walking through our snow-laden neighborhood, I passed an elderly man shoveling his driveway. I faintly recognized him from the local congregation. I offered my help, which he cheerfully accepted. The snow was deep and we labored together a little while, scoop and throw, scoop and throw.
Christmas Eve
Before the Night Grew Silent
Note: Our hope is that this reading can be deeply devotional. To be so, however, will require some moments of quiet and place and space where you can listen to the music (included below) and read along. We hope you’ll find some time, perhaps under the soft glow of lights in the last hours of evening, to enjoy.