Advent is to remind us we don’t “live Easter” or “live Resurrection” all the time. We live in resurrection power, yes. But we have darkness to deal with in our lives. Being in the northern hemisphere in Advent is perfect. We need to reflect on the darkness.

There will be a short stretch where I will be holed up in a cabin trying to avoid all contact with social media and the internet in general in another week. Darkness. Advent. Me.

Times arise in our lives where what is needed is to “hunker down.” It’s going to be cold? We hunker down for the night. It’s going to be a big storm tonight? We hunker down. It’s not retreat. At times, hunkering down is the necessary posture in our lives.

The Anglican Church helps in this practice. We don’t decorate the sanctuary “in Christmas” themes before Christmas. We won’t sing Christmas carols. We are called to make fearless inventory of our own lives (Fleming Rutledge). Advent is not for sentimentality. It is to measure character and courage.

“The entire thrust of this season… is designed to bring us face-to-face with reality — reality about sin and death, reality about the human race, reality about God. Something ultimate has entered our world, something or Someone that calls us to attention, calls us out of our daily preoccupations and our routine pointes of view. that is what this season with its special biblical readings is designed to reveal.” (Fleming Rutledge, Advent, p. 239)

I definitely have my list of Christmas movies I will watch in this season as well. They are full of sentimentality. AND I don’t deny the darkness. Both exist at the same time. I just don’t want to highlight one and forget the other.

This is reality.

This is Advent.