Advent: December 1 – Advent Is a Season of Waiting

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. Revelation 3:20

Jesus stands at the door, knocking (Revelation 3:20). In reality, he comes in the form of a beggar or a poor child in old, torn clothes, asking for help. He meets you in every person you see. As long as there are people, Christ will live on earth as your neighbor. Through them, God calls you, speaks to you, and asks you to act. This is the serious and blessed message of Advent. Christ stands at the door, living among us in the form of other human beings. Will you close the door or open it?

It might feel strange to see Christ in an ordinary face, but this is what he taught. If we ignore this serious Advent message, we cannot truly talk about Christ coming into our hearts.

Christ is knocking. It is not yet Christmas, but it is also not the final Advent—the last coming of Christ. In every Advent season of our lives, there is a deep hope for that final Advent, when Christ will say, “Look, I am making everything new” (Revelation 21:5).

Advent is a time of waiting, but in a way, our whole life is like an Advent season. We wait for the last Advent, the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

We can, and should also, celebrate Christmas despite the ruins around us.… I think of you as you now sit together with the children and with all the Advent decorations—as in earlier years you did with us. We must do all this, even more intensively because we do not know how much longer we have.

Letter to Bonhoeffer’s parents, November 29, 1943,
written from Tegel prison camp

^{Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. God Is in the Manger : Reflections on Advent and Christmas. Louisville, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, 2012.}