A confession

Okay, I actually wrote the last entry yesterday, before it rained. Then last night it started raining and sprinkled all night. So today I wasn't waiting for rain anymore. A bit of a fib there. But I liked the entry and I wanted to talk about waiting because it is, of course, an Advent theme.

In fact, pretending you're waiting when you already know what happened is a little like Advent too. Advent is half pretend and half real anticipation.

Because the season immediately preceeds Christmas, there's a feeling that you're waiting for Christmas to happen. And certainly, as kids, we did. When you're ten years old, last Christmas was so long ago that it may as well have been ancient history. December drags on, and you can hardly stand it. But what you're waiting for, as a kid, is Christmas and all the presents and cookies and so forth, not the coming of Christ.

As I grew older and came to understand that things really would repeat, year after year (and, incidentally, the presents got more boring), I came to focus on the process itself. We perform all these traditional actions, sacred and secular, because it is Advent. People say it's the Christmas season, but actually the season where we do all the shopping and decorating and preparations is really Advent.

When I became an adult and started working with the worship planning committee at my church, I really started to understand what Advent is about. During the four weeks of Advent, we live a double life, as it were. Through reading Isaiah and other prophets we become the ancient Israelites hoping for the coming of the Messiah. But at the same time, we are Christians who know that the Messiah has already come in the person of Christ, and it's not Christ's first coming we're preparing for, it's the second.

So like today, when I was sort of pretending I was still waiting for rain, in Advent we pretend we're still waiting for the Messiah. And we are, only the Messiah's already come.

The moon was gorgeous tonight -- full, or nearly so. And the skies were clear, washed by the rain.