Dear All,

For most of us December is chaotic and filled with busy preparations for Christmas celebrations, the cards, presents and food become a focus for our living. There is excitement in the air as we look forward to the day itself and all the fulfilment of our plans.

This is often quite enough yet we seem to want to make it even harder for ourselves by adding into this busy time the added stress of celebrating Christmas as well. With the increased mobility of our society which has led to families being spread thinly across the country and continent we now find it impossible to have the full Christmas effect on the day so we spread it. We eat the meal with groups that we belong to as early as the first days of December and go through all the Christmas rituals and traditions from food to games. It can become an exhausting round of feasting and fun that leaves the day itself, rather than a climax of all the preparations, as a tame affair that leaves us wondering what is missing.

The months since September for us have been a time of preparation, preparations for the future as we have been looking for a new Circuit to serve in from September 2008. The waiting for the name is now over and we are in the strange situation of knowing that we will be in Andover Circuit in nine months. It is so tempting to checkout of here now but there is important work to be done here so I must resist the temptation.

It is hard to stay in “the know” when society all around us does not do “delayed gratification”. We appear not to be able to wait for anything whether it is a doughnut in the Supermarket that we must eat before we pay for it or whether it is the new three piece suite from the once in a lifetime sale with four years interest free credit. We have lost the discipline and art of waiting.

The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, which means "coming" or "arrival" and is designed to encourage us to think whose coming it is that we are preparing for and what Jesus coming means to us and to the world. To do this we need space to reflect and prepare our hearts for Christmas day and the following twelve days of feasting and to do this we need space so we can focus on God's promise of salvation and the fulfilment of this promise in Jesus Christ that we read of in the stories that are read in this season. There is more too for the Advent not only looks back but forward as well as we wait for Jesus promised coming again. 

 John Henry Newman expressed the spirit of this waiting in one of his sermons: "We are not simply to believe, but to watch; not simply to love, but to watch; not simply to obey, but to watch; to watch for what?  For the great event, Christ's coming...

So can we wait in the spiritual "waiting room" that is Advent not just building up excitement but reminding ourselves what God has done for us all?

The invitation to travel through Advent is a challenge to us and to our culture. Must we have the future now? Or dare we use Advent to prepare and wait to celebrate Christ’s coming?

   God bless