Writing in the light of Advent

Image by Christel from Pixabay

I like this image. I chose it because it’s a rather lovely illustration of what Advent means … waiting for the light of Christ to dawn in our hearts, our lives and our world.

Advent is a penitential, reflective season. It’s a hardcore season, theologically. Christmas celebrates the First Coming of Christ: the focus of Advent is his Second Coming. The word often used for this in the Greek New Testament is parousia, meaning ‘arrival’, ‘presence’.

Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him;
and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.
So it is to be. Amen.
Revelation 1: 7, NRSV

(Given that everyone on the planet can now watch events unfolding in real time all at the same time, this doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched as it might have done a few years ago. We do live in a very sceptical age.)

The times feel heavy and dark. There are so many toxic, dissonant voices out there … some of them, unfortunately, within the church. There’s a pervasive uneasiness that expresses itself in the mental health crisis. Our culture has lost its bearings. We seem to be living off the capital of a Christian heritage that many dismiss, or even see as problematic. I don’t have easy answers for this, but I do believe that as Christian writers we can do what we can to be beacons of light in a darkening world.

Advent is very much about the ‘now and not yet’ – we believe that Jesus ushered in God’s kingdom through the outpouring of the Spirit, but 2,000 years after his ascension the world is as messy and dysfunctional as ever. Jesus came to free us from the power of sin and death, and we can live in this freedom here and now and beyond death itself, but the full consummation of the kingdom has yet to arrive. We feel the power of a gathering darkness … and yet we have faith in the light of the world, the true light that gives light to all. (John 1:9)

Who are your favourite writers that tackle these issues? Does your own writing express the tension between the ‘now and not yet’? What writing – apart from scripture - encourages your own faith and the Spirit’s gentle yet commanding call to stand tall, to be a light in the darkness?

May God increase our faith and inspire our imaginations, as we follow him on this Advent journey. May our stories, songs and poems reflect the Advent light.

I’m an Anglican lay minister and administrator for education and learning in the United Reformed Church. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul, published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW anthology Merry Christmas Everyone.