Tomorrow is Advent Sunday, the start of a new church year. This is something that the wider world vaguely knows about, with chocolate calendars for December and a countdown to Christmas. But the tradition of my denomination, to keep Advent as a time of waiting and of alert watching for God, this has a deeper and richer texture than a commercial countdown. The hope that all humanity is waiting and watching for? Maybe that a new dawn of justice and peace can be found? That God's love and light will break into the darkest places in the world and into people's hearts? Maybe something even more radical... And how are we called to wait? Not passively, listening to the ticking of a celestial waiting room's clock, but actively, participating in God's plans for justice, responding to the promise of glory and salvation.
So tomorrow is a chance for all humanity to join in the wait, occupied since the beginning of time, that all could be well in God's beloved creation...
