The Fourth Pause in Advent

We are resting today. Two weeks ago, we spent the entire day, over 12 hours, at the church. Last Sunday was much the same. It was all glorious, cheering, and fun.

But today I'm happy we are resting at home with our four children. Julia is eager for Christmas. She keeps asking, "Can I please open just one Christmas present now?"

And I say no. We will wait. The joy of Christmas is, in part, in the waiting, the knowing that a particular joy will arrive on a particular day.

It doesn't feel like Christmas at all. 78º. Balmy and warm. Bike-riding, shorts-wearing, windows-opening weather. I do imagine that Mary, if you'd asked her, would not have considered that night in the barnyard to be very likely for the birth of God either. Yet so it was. Christmas is unlikely. The advent-waiting is odd. Just now, a truck pulling a flatbed trailer stopped outside our house, full of Christmas carolers chatting and laughing. They sit on hay skirted with a string of twinkle lights. They're having a pleasant, warm ride tonight.

"Away in a manger," they sing. I stand on the porch and sing with them. Bless the carolers of the world! We are all hopeful strangers, singing together in the night under twinkling stars. I can't see their faces, but one thing binds us -- love of a baby, hope in a baby who will save us. Merry Christmas.

Go visit Floss's blog to read other Pause in Advent posts.