Start Wearing Purple

Being colour-blind, Advent was always been a bit lost on me as a kid. Apparently, the guys at the front of church (and girls too, these days!) started wearing purple, but all I could see was a canny shade of blue. The season could have been salvaged had I ever got to play around with fire in church, but I was never chosen to light the advent calendar, so the season never really rose above the status of a four week wait, during which the weather outside got steadily worse, people inside became more stressed and I grew ever more impatient for Christmas. Somehow, just having an advent calendar could never quite make up for it, especially as I never even got a chocolate one.

Advent, of course, is the partner to Lent: in the first, we wait for God to enter into our old, tattered creation with all its imperfections (such as a little mini version of me bouncing off the walls in impatience) and in the other, we wait for God to start the process of a new, permanent creation. The comparison I don't so often see pointed out, though, is between us, the church, and God's ancient people of Israel. They may have had things a bit more extreme back then – my parents' woe at having an impatient kid around the house pales when compared to an oppressive Roman occupation of Judea – but there is one thing that we have in common with the ancient Jews, we're both waiting for our Messiah. Advent may be an otherwise dark and depressing time of year, just as the old, divided, occupied 'land of milk and honey' could be a pretty dark place, but we, like they, know that our Messiah will come, not just as a babe, but in glory, to judge the living and the dead.

In the here and now, we could do well to learn from ancient Israel's story. Many people never get beyond Leviticus, but I love the Old Testament. It's the story of a loving father, who wants an intensely personal relationship with his wayward children. He brings them up, does his best by them, despairs when they rebel against him but defends them to the hilt while guiding them through a hostile world. Sometimes he's tender, sometimes he has to exercise tough love, but eventually, as with all children, they grow up and decide to go their own way. As with all parents, he painfully lets them go, and he watches them end up in a bad place. However, the father can still rescue the remnant of his children and he does this by coming to Earth to find them.

Like the ancient people of Israel, we, the children of God, are a remnant in a hostile place. The world is a hard place to be as a Christian, and there are many ways to go astray. Sometimes, it can seem like our father is nowhere to be seen. However, like the ancient Israelites, we can know for certain that He is out there, and He is coming. There is one thing we can know for sure: Christmas will come.