With a smile, it is a forever task to flip our thinking away from Christmas just as a stand-alone day to celebrate, to a more life-giving view of advent as a call to the work. Restated – advent then begins, not ends a story.
What might that work be? Where might it begin?
The work might begin in imagining a world of deep peace, shalom, where even within the rending losses of the past year, we feel settling on our hearts God’s tender words, “Behold I make all things new.”
The work might well then move to the humble, generative actions we are given to see and given to do.
The gravity of that call is hard to capture. The work is real. It is likewise both serious and sacrificial. Indeed, there is a “gravitas” so to speak.
And the journey, serious in part, starts with a celebration, on a day we call Christmas. This Christmas, let us both celebrate and begin again the work anew.