I still possess one of the advent calendars we had as kids. It’s remarkably well preserved, 50 years on, a testament to the reverence with which we treated such things. Although the same two calendars were recycled every year, I still remember the thrill of opening the little doors and the guilty longing to sneak a peak at the 24th.
There were no chocolates secreted in the calendars; the pictures were of the Christian story of Jesus birth and what led up to it, so we were reminded of the stories every morning. And we learnt to wait.
In the church season of Advent, starting on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, waiting is the operative word.
Older people know by experience that the most important things can’t be hurried. Growing a baby or a garden, knitting a jumper, writing a symphony, nurturing a friendship that will last through anything, developing trust between traditional enemies, starting a grassroots movement, building a healthy marriage.
In Advent, Christians wait with expectation for the birth of the one they believe was somehow God in utterly human form. But this is not all we wait for.
In Advent, part of the deal is waiting for what has historically been known as the second coming of Christ. This has a whole lot of colourful mythology associated with it; what it means to this 21st century Christian and many others is something we call the coming of the Kingdom or the Reign of God.
This is a time when we believe that God will bring all things to some sort of culmination. That injustice will be righted, that, to quote the Bible, ‘God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.’
This might sound real pie in the sky stuff, what Marx called the opiate of the masses. For followers of Jesus, however, believing this is no substitute for acting to try and bring about justice and mercy in the world, to increase the pool of love around them, drawing on the infinite resources of the God of love. Christians are called to pray and to work for the end of warfare and violence and pollution - all the time knowing that we may never fully achieve this - and longing for a time when the big love that is God will bring us all home.
One of the creeds of the earliest Christians was ‘Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again’. In Advent, we prepare to celebrate God becoming human. We wait and pray for the time when all will be set right and that in the meantime, to quote St Francis of Assisi, God might make us instruments of God’s peace.