What Can't Wait

 We are not doing Advent the same way this year!

Advent is traditionally a time of waiting. We wait for Christ to be born, to celebrate the birth of Jesus and for the world to know peace. Advent waiting helps us to recall why we need peace, hope, love and joy. However, this Advent we are doing things a little differently. This Advent we are going to talk about, “What Can’t Wait.”  

A worship group called, “A Sanctified Art” assembled an engaging rethinking of the Advent story by meditating on the precarious timing of Christ’s birth. Here is what one of the writers shared: God chooses an unwed, lower-class, teenage girl forced to travel cross-country to be counted for the census in the midst of her third trimester. Matthew’s gospel tells us that Christ’s birth incites King Herod to mandate a mass genocide, which forces Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to flee to Egypt for refuge. God’s plan to enter the world in human flesh seems so perilous—so much could and did go wrong. 

This led me to wonder, what if God had waited? What if God had waited for some perfect day when all the world’s problems were resolved? What if God had waited for a perfect moment in time—or for the perfect family?

But God couldn’t wait. God dove into the mess and the muck of this world so that we might know love. 
    
In the same way, we can’t sit and wait around for our world’s problems to solve themselves. We can’t assume that a perfect moment or a fail-proof plan will emerge if we just hold out for long enough. We can’t wait to join God in being love known in flesh and bone.  
    
​ We will put these words about what can’t wait into action in worship through art, liturgy, poetry, and music. We will be
sending out Advent Calendars and Daily Devotionals to help you pray and do something about, “What Can’t Wait!”
 
Blessings, Rev. Trey Hegar