Four Attitudes for Advent
It was 2008 when our family moved to Central Asia. We were settling into life there, learning the local language, and enjoying the adventure of new beginnings and new experiences. At the end of our first November, however, we began to encounter an eerie silence. We lived in one of the world’s largest cities, bustling with noise and commotion, and yet we could not avoid this silence. It was a Christmas silence.
This nation was over 99% Muslim, and as we went about the routines of life, there were no discernible signs that the Christmas season was upon us: no Christmas music in stores, no lights, no Christmas trees, no manger scenes – nothing.
The silence became for us an ever-present reminder that the light of Christ had yet to shine in that land. For most, the light of Christ had yet to be seen.
It was in that season of silence that we began to discover four attitudes, born in the Advent traditions of the church, that would help us fix our eyes on Jesus and live with intentionality for His glory and the expansion of His Kingdom.
LAMENT
If we look into the silence, the darkness, and the brokenness, we see that the prince of this world always fights to preserve the darkness. Satan is a tyrant unmatched in all history. He is the enemy of God and thus, he is all humanity’s enemy. Wherever the light of Jesus is pushing into corners of darkness, or “enemy occupied territory” as C.S. Lewis calls it, Satan will oppose it. In much of our world, that opposition has come in the form of brutal oppression and violence. At Jesus’s birth, Satan fought back through King Herod. Today, it may be an oppressive government, violently radical religious groups, or plain old racists.
But Satan doesn’t always use violence and brutality. Deception works just the same. He takes the truth of a Creator God, twists it, and binds 1.8 billion Muslims in a works-based religion built on legalism. He pawns pantheism and paganism and atheism and materialism as paths to a good life. The pursuit of the American dream works just as well for him as the ideological brainwashing of an atheistic Chinese regime. Satan is no respecter of ideologies or religion; he’ll use whatever he can. It’s all empty chasing after false idols.
The first coming of Christ has happened! Two thousand years ago, Jesus was born as a baby, lived a perfect life, and died for the sins of the world. Satan was defeated at the cross, and the light of life is available to all who call on the name of Jesus to be saved. The second coming of Christ WILL happen. He will come again. He will make all things new – the creation, our work, our relationships with others and with God. Satan will be cast into the pit, and sin and death will be no more. Revelation 20 and 21 – read it now if you need a little hope – will be a reality.
In the interim, however, over five billion people in our world are not experiencing the abundant life of Jesus. And 2.2 billion live in places with no access to the Gospel. But it's not just those tied up in false religions. It’s right here in our Christmas-saturated society as well.
A recent article in the Washington Post reported that the average lifespan of Americans has fallen for the first time in decades. It’s fallen not because older people aren’t living as long but because of the drastic increase in mid-life deaths of 20-, 30-, and 40-year-olds. One researcher said, “There is something more fundamental about how people are feeling at some level – whether it’s economic, whether it’s stress, whether it’s deterioration of family. People are feeling worse about themselves and their futures, and it’s leading them to do things that are self-destructive and not promoting health.”
Our world is a broken place. The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. That’s the bad news. Tish Harrison Warren recently wrote that “To practice Advent is to lean into an almost cosmic ache: our deep, wordless desire for things to be made right and the incompleteness we find in the meantime. We dwell in a world still racked with conflict, violence, suffering, darkness.”
Lament is our appropriate response.
It’s not the way things are supposed to be. Violence, polarization, spiritual blindness, racism, contempt, false worship, environmental degradation, hatred, idolatry – they break the Father’s heart, and they should break ours.
EXPECTATION
We move from lament to expectation because brokenness is not the end of the story. Jesus was born. Herod failed. The true Light that gives light to everyone has come into the world. Satan has been defeated.
In Matthew 24:14, Jesus told His disciples that "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come." We know this will happen, because when John is given a peek into the future reality of heaven in Revelation 7:9, he says, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out in a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
We reach out with the expectation of the woman afflicted with 12 years of bleeding who expected to be healed if only she could touch the cloak of Jesus.
We walk with the expectation of blind Bartimaeus who looked a fool screaming, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” knowing in his heart that Jesus would come to him.
We stand in expectation, and Jesus, reaching out toward the newly opened tomb cries, “Lazarus. Come out!”
We give with reckless generosity, following the example of the first Christians in the book of Acts and Jesus’s teaching that it is “more blessed to give than to receive.” We give in expectation that God will meet us in our giving.
Jesus is true to His word. He is making all things new. Our world is shot through with light and hope, and the darkness will not hold.
CELEBRATION
And as we move from expectation to celebration, it truly is the time to sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come!” Like the wise men, we sacrifice time and resources to come to Jesus, and when we see Him, theirs is the only right response – to fall down and worship! We’ve been saved. We’ve been adopted into His family. We’ve been set free and made new and can live the abundant life of Jesus. And we will reign forever with Him in heaven!
More Muslims have come to faith in Christ in the last 15 years than in the previous 1,400 years combined. Some of the fastest growing churches in the U.S. are in prisons. The fastest growing church in the world today is in Iran.
Because Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, we live in eager anticipation that others will experience the same gift of salvation that we have experienced.
Lament. Expectation. Celebration.
It’s an Advent pattern that we discovered could help us keep our focus on Christ during Christmas.
MISSION
And so, as we fix our eyes on Jesus this Advent season, let us fix our hearts on the things that His heart is fixed on, on the reason that He came. Ever since Genesis 3, everything in Scripture – everything in the cosmos – was pointing to the moment in time when God would send His Son into our broken and dark world in order to reconcile all things to Himself. The Bible is the story of rescue. Of mission.
And so to this Advent pattern of lament, expectation, and celebration, it is important to also add mission. Our appropriate response to Jesus, who came to seek and save the lost, is to join Him on His mission. He is the Light of the world, and He called us to be light to the world as well; we are not to hide our light. He was sent into this dark and broken world, and He says, as I was sent, so I send you. He calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to give expecting nothing in return. He leaves the 99 to go after the one. He sweeps the house clean to find the lost coin, and His last command to His disciples and to us was to go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that He had commanded.
Christmas is the celebration of the mission of God. The God of the universe loved us so much that He sent His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
That’s why Jesus came. That’s why we have Christmas.
Lament. Expectation. Celebration. Mission.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus – mindful of the brokenness and darkness of this world – but filled with hope because the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
As we move toward Christmas day, commit to taking some time to ask the Lord what He might want the next few weeks to look like for you and for your family.
He might just say: Stay the course.
He might invite you into life-altering changes, into a new journey of risk-taking obedience to the King.
Lament. Expectation. Celebration. Mission.
Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared at: https://cobbledtogether.substack.com/p/four-attitudes-for-advent