My dog is very good at Advent: very good indeed. For in Advent, we wait. We bide time, we long, we hope and hold on, waiting for the coming of Christ to establish the justice and peace for which the world longs. All this, I’m sure, is quite over Benny the Beagle’s head. But he’s terrifically good at waiting. When I first adopted him, my first dog, I was amazed at just how much of his life is spent waiting: for food, for a walk, for me to get back, for bed, for the morning. That waiting that so many of us find uncomfortable, he seems to find very comfortable indeed (or so the snoring implies).

But waiting can seem a good deal more complex and awkward for us – it feels like a void – and I suspect this is why so many of us spend so much energy trying to minimise it. Scrap those images of tranquil spa retreats promising peace and stillness – entering into that ‘on hold’ mode within our lives is terrifying. Waiting in the stillness before God is not very comfortable. For when we cut back into the quiet places, we are left facing ourselves, and quite often when left with facing ourselves, we won’t like everything we find. The quiet, the waiting, is a way of stopping our incessant ability for distraction, to avoid facing the inconsistencies and irresolutions that are suspended just beneath the surface. Advent is an invitation, a challenge, to enter that unnerving space of uncertainty, to bat away our keep-moving mentality and stall our get-it-sorted reflex, and so to let the truth about ourselves emerge – the truth about our need, our wounds, our vulnerabilities, and also the truth of God’s voice, calling us and gifting us even in the silence.

Judgement is essentially an exercise in discovering that truth; and though the truth may seem terrifying to discover, it will also set us free. This Saturday morning at St Mary’s there is an opportunity to explore together those strong Advent themes – judgement and hell – in a Reflection Morning in the Old Library (10am-12noon), through readings and discussion. Are these obtuse and fantastical mechanisms for power, residues of a bygone world of religious domination? Are they ways of articulating something fundamental about our experience of the reality around and within us? What is it about judgement and hell that we detest, and conversely that some Christians find so vital and (disturbingly) energising? I hope you’ll be able to join us for what promises to be a gripping morning.

Whether you are managing to maintain an Advent mode or not, the shape and the feel of our worship at St Mary’s during this season I hope provides an opportunity to be presented with that question and challenge to sit in the void where everything is not right, and where we can do little but wait and learn the virtues of hope and trust in the midst of the dark, all the while longing for the light that will come.

A prayer of Gregory of Nazianzus:

O God, by whose command the order of time runs its course:
Forgive, we pray thee, the impatience of our hearts;
make perfect that which is lacking in our faith;
and, while we tarry the fulfilment of thy promises,
grant us to have a good hope because of thy word;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Assistant Priest