From Pastor Kristin

When I was growing up, my brother and I would always fight over who got to light and blow out the candles on our family advent wreath.

It was an advent tradition in our household to have an advent areath on the dinner table, which would get lit every time my family gathered for a meal. Some years my mom would get fancy and put evergreen branches with the four candles. Other years, it was enough that the candles didn’t tip over while lit and light the whole table on fire.

I still don’t know what it is about an advent wreath – about the 1,2,3, and then 4 small lights on the table – that speaks to me. Even what it is about the season of advent that I so enjoy. Perhaps it is the light shining on these dark nights. Perhaps it is the season’s contrariness that stands stubbornly in resistance to an invading Christmas. Perhaps it’s just a reason I can use not to join the mobs at the mall. Or perhaps, it is the ritual of meeting God in a simple tradition and season that still seems so mysterious.

When we enter into the mysterious, otherworldly, unexpectedness of advent, we are in good company – even if we don’t completely understand what is going on or what God is up to in this advent season. For we join our voices with a weird, bellowing man named John who made his home in the dried-up desert. We become perplexed with a teenage girl who wonders what God is doing with her life. And we believe in the midst of our doubts with a dangerously pregnant Elizabeth. People whose lives have been turned upside down by God

I hope that in the mystery of this advent season, God will enter into your life, and turn you a bit upside down as well, as we wait for the coming of Jesus the Christ.

Pastor Kristin