First Sunday in Advent: Hope

Well, we had our Preparing for Advent morning yesterday. It was wonderful!  Wonderful women who came and threw themselves wholeheartedly into all the activities- especially the pear-making! (Mine has only just reached a form of completion- you can see where it might end up if its quality were of the edible kind!)

I was so struck by all that worries us in the Advent season that I've posted it as a page above. We are buffeted by such a list of things to do and think about and accomplish. It was good to have a whole morning to set those aside and try to fill ourselves up on what Advent really means to us, what we really want to convey to our families and those around us.

Last year I put out our Advent candle holder and noticed that we had decorations that said Joy, Peace and Love so I hung them on it. Mattman came to inspect, looked me squarely in the eyes and said, "Mum, you have no hope for Christmas." How insightful that sun is!  I told some friends about this, and a few evenings before Christmas, Queen Niqi arrived with a packet of cookies for us, and chatted about this and that without my shaking the sense that there was something that she wasn't saying. Eventually "I didn't want you to be without hope this Christmas, " she said, pulling out a tiny package that held the most beautiful hand-sewn pillow of Hope you could find.

I think if I wasn't being constantly reminded that Christmas brought us hope, I wouldn't be in the slightest bit hopeful of achieving anything!  But the Life-Light is coming into our worlds, and not the darkness, the busyness or the shopping can put it out.