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Praying about the flow of time: Advent can be confusing

Lynne Baab • Tuesday November 26 2024

My congregation focuses on one word for each Sunday of Advent: hope, joy, peace, and love. When we light the Advent wreath in church every Sunday, each candle represents one of those words. In Advent, we prepare for Jesus’s first and second coming. To me, those four words — hope, joy, peace, and love — seem to relate more to Jesus’s arrival than preparation for his coming. I find this confusing.

Advent has traditionally been viewed as a penitential season. “Penitential” means focused on sorrow for having done wrong. Penitence moves us to confess our sins and receive forgiveness, and penitence helps...

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Draw near: Praying in Advent

Lynne Baab • Tuesday December 6 2022

Dietrich Bonhoeffer had an interesting take on how to engage in the Advent season. His words can guide our prayers during this season leading up to Christmas. In a sermon delivered on Dec. 2, 1928, when he was only 22 years old, Bonhoeffer said:

“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come” (from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons).

December is such a complicated month for those of us who live in countries with a strong Christian heritage that has been overlaid...

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Grief and gratitude in Advent

Lynne Baab • Thursday December 2 2021

“We have a prevailing feeling, especially in the west, that spirituality must always be uplifting and positive. This tendency arises out of a confusion about what love truly is. We know that God is love, and that we are called to live lives of love, but we often think of the fake love of Hollywood movies and catchy pop songs. Love is not a positive happy feeling. It is not always uplifting and encouraging. Love is selflessness, it is the rapture of being lost in the well being of others. So, it follows naturally that if we have love for creation,...

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Intentionality and space at Christmas in the Southern hemisphere

Lynne Baab • Thursday December 31 2020

For my Northern Hemisphere readers, I want you to think about the busiest times of year for you pre-pandemic. I’ve heard my mother say many times that December and June are her busiest months, because December is full of Christmas parties and extra events at church, as well as shopping and Christmas preparation, and June is full of graduations, student musical and theatrical events, and other activities at the end of the school year. One more busy time for most people is the weeks before a vacation.

Here in New Zealand, those three busy times are collapsed into one month, the month...

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