Kyle Dresback

Dear Friends,

I’ve found that celebrating Advent in a world of Christmas takes some effort. In our family, no two Advents have looked the same. Some years we dive right in, books and candles and prayers everywhere. Other years (like this one), we’re a week in and still trying to get our bearings.

So why all the work?

For our family, the effort has been rewarded with curious questions and opportunities to tell a big story. There is a wisdom and a richness in the tradition that’s hard to replicate with Amazon’s Prime Day and (no disrespect to Brenda Lee) “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.”

I suspect that the value in the tradition of Advent is due to the fact that it’s old. It’s been tried and handed down. There’s something enduringly human about the routine. By taking part, I take my place in a stream of countless others who have brought their own human curiosities and experiences and questions to the gospel story.

It’s fitting then that the one we wait for during Advent is also mysteriously human, born into all of the familiar beauty and chaos of the world we inhabit.

This week I encountered a sermon Augustine preached over 16 centuries ago. In it, he reflects on the coming of a very human Jesus into the world he created. His reflection captures the contradictions and complexities of the season that still ring true today:

The Maker of man became Man that He, Ruler of the stars, might be nourished at His mother’s breast; that He, the Bread, might hunger; that He, the Fountain, might thirst; that He, the Light, might sleep; that He, the Way, might be wearied by the journey; that He, the Truth, might be accused by false witnesses; that He, the Judge of the living and the dead, might be brought to trial by a mortal judge; that He, Justice, might be condemned by the unjust; that He, Discipline, might be scourged with whips; that He, the Foundation, might be suspended upon a cross; that Courage might be weakened; that Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.

As we wait with anticipation, let’s step into this old stream that has flowed with the followers of the one who redeemed humanity by taking it up in himself.

In Christ,

—Kyle