In the traditional church calendar, the four weeks prior to Christmas are not the "Christmas season," they are Advent. While the world celebrates the season, many churches utilize music that hangs out in a minor key. While Christmas carols play everywhere else, the church sings song of expectation and waiting. We tell stories about John the Baptist and the Apocalypse. There is a massive disconnect between the "sacred" and the "secular" if you are in a church that follows the church calendar.

This year, I decided to get rid of the disconnect and gear my sermons and our worship toward Christmas to, hopefully capture some folks in need of some Christmas spirit. So, we started singing Christmas carols at the beginning of December and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it!

The crowds didn't show up, however. I was a little disappointed that we didn't have more visitors. It seems that waiting won't be denied. Whether we like it or not, we will have to wait. Wait to grow, wait to get better at preaching, wait for transformation to happen.

This afternoon, I read an article by Richard Foster over at Renovare. It was a great reminder of the importance and benefit of waiting.

Waiting, however, is not a passive activity, however. That is where I find the "waiting" of Advent as typically practiced as boring and frustrating. We wait and wait and wait and nothing...ever...happens.

We wait because we must, but that waiting is active. It is the runner at the starting line, itching to move at the sound of the gun. It is the race car mired in the pack looking for an opening to move into. Waiting is an active activity. When we must wait we are driven deeper into the Divine.