My theology professor in seminary felt like adults were so drawn to Advent because it gave grown-ups an opportunity to "play-like." For four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas we pretend that we don't know Jesus has come.
In a sense, we suspend reality for a few days. We "play-like" we live in the days before Jesus' birth . . . we imagine the waiting, the expectation, the pregnant hope. We read again how the Hebrew prophets imagined that God would send a servant who would suffer with and for the people.
We pretend surprise at the angelic announcements . . . we imagine the courage the first hearers of glad tidings must have felt . . . we try to ramp up our "joy" and offer it "to the world" as the earliest worshipers at the manger did.
For years, Advent gave me an opportunity to "play-like." I suppose now I love Advent so much because I don't have to "play-like" now. I'm familiar with my own interior darkness, the darkness of disease, and the darkness of the world around me. I find that waiting and pregnant hope stretch me beyond myself and deeper into the heart of God.
It seems most often that "the light shining in the darkness" is something like a pinhole on the night horizon, and I have to be remarkably still and attentive to notice it.
So we play-like, and wait, and hope, and watch.
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