A key element of living with Advent anticipation is faith. What I’ve discovered about a life of faith is that it generally does not come with precise boundaries. It’s less about a journey with GPS-like precision and more about discerning the ink-blot movements of God with all the help from Rorschach I can get.  We want Advent to be the season in which all uncertainty is banished. And in a way, it is. The certainty of Advent is that God has made his way to us in the form of the God-child Jesus and that he one day he will make His way back again. Only this second coming will be a triumphal one in which the restoration of all things is made complete. Until that day, we live in the season of Advent and every season of life by faith.

Karl Barth, in his Epistle to the Romans, writes this about the demands of living by faith: “If we fix our eyes upon the place where the course of the world reaches its lowest point, where its vanity is unmistakable, where its groanings are most bitter and the divine incognito most impenetrable, we shall encounter there – Jesus Christ…the transformation of all things occurs where the riddle of human life reaches its culminating point. The hope of His glory emerges for us when nothing but the existentiality of God remains, and He become to us the veritable and living God. He, whom we can apprehend only as against us, stands there for us.”

As the Advent season marches toward its culmination on Christmas day, may we be reminded to fix our eyes on the Christ-child.

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