When I was a little boy, I loved Jell-O. Okay, I still love Jell-O. But this gelatin bliss is also a little frustrating. I can still picture in my mind the special white baking dish that my grandma used to put Jell-O in. She’d prepare it and then put it in the refrigerator for it to settle, sometimes for 3-4 hours.
I hated the waiting. And sometimes, I’d slip into the kitchen, grab a spoon, and try some a little earlier. It was never as good. It didn’t have the right texture. It just wasn’t right. If you’re really patient, you can wait overnight, and the Jell-O is absolutely perfect. I seldom was able to wait.
I think of my propensity to rush the Jell-O process when I hear Christmas music playing on the first of November. I get it. We love Christmas. We love the festivities. We love the sentiment of Christmas. And if we’re honest, we love the presents. But we hate the waiting.
Advent can help us appreciate the wait and have a better celebration when Christmas finally arrives.
What Is Advent?
I was raised in a community where Catholics were about as rare as a Kansas City Royals winning season. (If you aren’t a baseball fan, know that those are incredibly rare, always technically possible but usually not likely). But even still, they were more common than Anglicans, Methodists, or Presbyterians. In our town, you were either a non-churchgoer, a Baptist, a Christian, or on a rare occasion, a Catholic. I think we had a Presbyterian church, but growing up, I never met one in the flesh.
All that to say, for me, something like Advent was reserved for those rich people churches. I associated it with a stuffy traditionalism and an empty faith. I also knew the real meaning of Christmas was Jesus’ birthday, but if I’m being honest, I was more excited about new packs of baseball cards than I was about the prospect of any kind of spiritual rescue.
The truth is, I needed Advent. Advent means coming. But it’s all about the waiting. It is a celebration of not only the birth of Christ but also the second coming of Christ. It’s about hope and waiting. It’s the declaration that Christ came but also that He is coming again. It’s the already but not yet of redemption.
There are various traditions that differ between denominations. But at the core, they are attempts to put into place rhythms to help us wait, to celebrate His incarnation, but also to remind us that all is not quite yet redeemed.
For the weeks leading up we sing songs of longing. We cry out, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” or “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”. As we do this, we realize we’re waiting for Christmas—but we’re also waiting for the second coming. We’re waiting for the Jell-O to settle.
Why Is it Important?
Advent is important because it is a good for us to learn to wait. In the ESV, the word “wait” or “hope in” appears 100 times in the OT and 32 times in the NT. In numerous places in the Psalms we are encouraged to wait. The songbook of Israel is filled with a call to wait upon the Lord.
“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” - Psalm 27:14
“For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.” - Psalm 37:9
“But for you, O LORD, do I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer” - Psalm 38:15
“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.” - Psalm 130:5
In the New Testament our waiting shifts to waiting for his second coming. We “wait for his Son from heaven” (1 Thes. 1:10) and we are “waiting for our blessed hope.” James 5:7 is a beautiful picture of what we are doing in Advent:
Be patient, therefore, brothers until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. James 5:7
The truth of Christmas Day is a reminder that all of the Old Testament waiting and longing came to fruition. God came through on His promises. And so, we celebrate this with great vigor. Because it means God has rescued us. But there is also a longing that this also sets into place, because God not only has rescued us—someday he also will rescue us.
Perhaps it would be helpful to consider what we miss if we don’t celebrate Advent.
What if we don’t celebrate Advent?
When I stuck my grubby little fingers into grandma’s Jell-O before it settled, I was robbing myself of deeper joy. Yes, it was technically still Jell-O. It still had most of the sweet taste. I was able to kind of slurp it down and get some measure of enjoyment out of it. But I couldn’t pick it up. I couldn’t appreciate it for all that it is.
Not celebrating Advent is similar. Yes, you can still get much benefit out of celebrating on Christmas Day. There can be joy found in listening to Christmas classics on November 1st. They are fun songs. You can have a fine experience mixing up all your Christmas songs where you sing O Come, O Come on the same Sunday that you sing Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. You don’t really have to celebrate Advent to experience the reality of the incarnation or to understand longing for the Second Coming.
But you won’t learn to wait as well. Your joy on Christmas Day won’t be nearly as sweet if you don’t learn how to stretch out the longing and the waiting. You’ll miss out on several teaching opportunities as we wait for Christmas Day, we are also reminded of our waiting for the Second Coming. Advent helps us be better watchers and better at waiting.
I suppose, like anything, Advent could turn into a dead and empty ritual. But the same is true of the tumult that we’ve turned the Christmas season into. Advent can give us guard rails and structure to what can be a chaotic season. Advent slows us down. When we blend everything into one loaf and call it “Christmas” it too can become just as stale as a bargain bin fruitcake.
Conclusion
You don’t have to celebrate Advent. But you really should. Consider researching some of the great traditions, some of the time-tested symbols and actions which help us wait, hope, and celebrate the redemption which Christ has brought and to help us long for the redemption He is still bringing.
Get your hands out of the Jell-O. It’ll be better if you learn to wait.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/NRuedisueli