Belmont University Advent GuideParaugs

I know that the season of Advent is supposed to be one of expectation and excitement. It is intended to be a time of anticipation as we wait for the day when we remember the coming of the infant Jesus.

But to be perfectly honest, I am not feeling so hopeful this year. Instead of being filled with expectation and anticipation during this season of joy, I find myself deeply weary. My season in life is one of longing, but it is not a sense of longing that is tinged with happiness or wonder. It is a longing that asks when suffering will end.

I have dear friends in this season of longing and waiting with me. There are job losses and sick parents. There is a father who is now elderly and is no longer the jovial man who helps decorate the Christmas tree. There is also the father who is unemployed and wondering if he will be able to support his family. There are spouses who are ill and cancer that has returned. There is a different kind of waiting. There’s a waiting for results from medical tests and waiting for a difficult season to pass.

These friends and I have conversations about how to feel joyful about the gift of life even when a sense of happiness is not present in our daily lives.

This year, I find comfort and indeed joy in knowing that I am simply part of the long story of humanity. The psalmist laments that the Lord’s face is hidden and offers us the image of sinking down into the very dust from which we came. The Gospel writer offers warnings to those who are pregnant or nursing infants, referencing what biblical scholars agree is a reflection on the trying times surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome.

These passages do not end with only dire warnings about great calamities. They do not end without hope. The psalmist pleads for God’s redemptive power, and the Gospel writer envisions the triumphant coming of the Son of Man.

The central idea is that even when we do not feel it, God is with us, a constant and loving presence. That sense of anticipation for the coming of Immanuel is what we cling to, for the God that comes and then suffers with us, and who never stops loving us, no matter what befalls us.

My friends embody this for me, too, in our community. There is joy in togetherness and in the belief that time will bring new periods of happiness to balance the times of suffering.

So, as I reflect on the season of Advent this year, I do have peace. My peace comes from thinking of the whole of Jesus’s story, a story full of suffering, joy and love.

Sally Holt
Professor of Religion