Greetings …

This Sunday is the first in the liturgical year – Advent 1.  Advent is the season of expectation, the time when we are called to slow down as we anticipate the birth of Jesus.

I received an email this week which shared a quote that was attributed to Dietrich Bonhoffer.  He is understood to have said:  ‘Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten.  It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot … For the greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the world, we must wait.’

I agree that it’s hard to wait and acknowledge that often we don’t do it well.  But if we are able to slow down and immerse ourselves in waiting it can be a real gift.  The fact that we are not rushing around doesn’t mean that we are sleeping though.  As we wait, we are called to ‘awake’ and be on the alert.

Waiting gives us the time and opportunity see see and hear and feel things that we can otherwise be too busy to notice.  I wonder what things God might be waiting to reveal to us when we make time to see and hear and feel?  And if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, how might we experience God’s presence in all that is happening around us?

As we wait and watch this Advent season, I pray that we might each appreciate anew the gift of waiting, and that as we, do may hear the melody of hope that God brings to our lives.

Blessings – Rev  Heather Hon (she/her).