Advent does not emerge in serenity. It arrives in a time of fracture and fear.
Gabrielle Dean
Advent is not understood and actually ignored, but instead becomes Black Friday and a season for consumeristic materialism where people buy often what they cannot afford and hold onto such a pastiche of what is really going on in the word which is in a state of collapse.
For those who even are aware of Advent, it is often imagined as a peaceful season - candles burning gently in the darkness, familiar carols, soft-lit nativity scenes. Yet the actual story of Advent does not emerge in serenity. It arrives in a time of fracture and fear. Jesus is born into a world unraveling under the weight of empire. The Roman economy was faltering. Heavy taxation crushed the poor. Climate disruptions and famine spread through regions already strangled by political instability. Violence simmered at the edges of daily life. The empire’s infrastructures - political, social, moral - were cracking. Advent unfolds not against a backdrop of calm, but in an atmosphere of collapse.
Perhaps this is why the Advent story feels strangely contemporary. We too live in a moment marked by overlapping crises - what many now call a polycrisis. ….
The hyperlink IAN J MOBSBY will take you to his page and the complete post if you want to read the whole post.
Excerpt from Awaiting Light in the Ruins: A Hopeful Contemplative Advent for a Collapsing World
A personal reflection on the season of Advent as a time of darkness and difficulty and the call to hopeful resilience.
