Advent Devotional

I love the season of Advent in the church.

The sanctuary draped in deep purple (or blue) paraments. Fresh greenery threaded

across the altar and windowsills—cedar, pine, maybe a sprig of holly tucked where only

the children notice. The smell of warm bread drifting from the kitchen, rising and filling

the hallways with the promise of communion. The Advent wreath glowing with just one

flame at first, its soft light flickering against stained glass and nativity scenes.

There is a somber quiet that settles in the room—not heavy, but holy. A quiet laced with

joy. A hush that says, “Something is coming… wait, watch, see.”

For ten years, I helped lead congregations through this season. Lighting candles with

families, praying with people at the rail, offering communion, singing hymns in minor

keys that hold both longing and hope.

This is my first Advent in a decade to not be leading a church through these rhythms

and there is significant grief in that. Stepping back from something I loved, something

that shaped me so deeply, has left a tender ache—a kind of Advent darkness all of its

own.

Advent, after all, always begins in the dark.

Before angels proclaim good news, before shepherds run, before the star pierces the

sky, and before the innkeeper opens the door to strangers, the season opens with

shadows, silence, and even rejection. Advent insists that we pause here: not to fear the

darkness, but to understand it.

In Scripture, darkness is not always a symbol of despair, but rather, it is often the place

where God begins something holy. Isaiah declares:

“The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light.”

Isaiah 9:2, NRSV

Light is not celebrated because darkness never existed: light is celebrated because it

breaks into the very places where we feel lost, weary, or undone. Advent darkness is

not the darkness of abandonment,but the darkness of gestation—the womb-like

mystery where God forms new life.This year, I have lived in that kind of darkness, as I’m sure many of you have as well. I

have carried the sorrow of losing my grandfather. I have navigated the ache of creating

necessary boundaries for the first time with family members and being villainized

because of it. I have mourned leaving a church and institution I loved deeply—spaces

that shaped my ministry and identity, yet ultimately became places I had to release in

order to step into what God was calling me toward next. I have experienced the fear that

comes from releasing my desire to please others, no longer abandoning the woman

God made me to be, even if it makes others uncomfortable.

These shadows have stretched long across my year. Yet, even here, a truth from the

Psalms has held me fast:

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,’

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.”

Psalm 139:11–12, NRSV

This is Advent’s first promise: the darkness is not empty because God is already

here.

When the angel appears to Mary, the miracle begins not in daylight, but in the shadows:

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

Luke 1:35, NRSV

Overshadowed. Held in holy darkness. Filled but not consumed, just like the burning

bush Moses encountered:

“The bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.”

Exodus 3:2, NRSV

The incarnation tells us that God does not avoid human fragility, but rather inhabits and

chooses it. This leads us to the central question Advent invites us to ask: “what is the

light?”

The light is not simply the end of suffering or the removal of pain. It is not optimism, and

it is not a quick fix. The light is Christ Himself: God with us, God within us, God entering

the deepest human shadows to transform them from the inside out.

John’s Gospel proclaims:“The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness did not overcome it.”

John 1:5, NRSV

The light is the incarnate presence of God breaking into the world in Christ through

vulnerability, gentleness, and embodied love. It is the assurance that no loss, no

boundary, no ending, and no season of grief will have the final word. It is the slow dawn

rising over a year that felt long and heavy, revealing that God has been forming

something new all along.

The darkness may labor, but the light is born. May we be ever-ready to embrace the

light of Christ as it breaks through in the already and the not yet, the seen and unseen,

the sacred and the ordinary.

Reflection Questions

1. Where have I experienced “Advent darkness” this year: moments of grief,

transition, or uncertainty?

2. How might God be quietly forming something new in the shadows I would rather

avoid?

3. What does it mean to me that Christ is the light? Not a quick solution, but God’s

presence within my very real human experience?

4. Where is God inviting me to let go, so that something new can be born in me?

5. How can I welcome the slow, steady arrival of Christ’s light in my life and calling?