The Season
I was driving home this past week and noticed the changing colors of the leaves. Here in Texas we don't experience fall like many areas do, but we still have leaves of yellow and red and bright orange. On this particular fall day, the colors were vivid and beautiful. It is an irony of fall that these amazing and vivid fall colors signal to us the coming of winter; a season marked by gray and lifeless landscapes, and the appearance of death in nature. Looks can be deceiving, and so it is with the season of winter; within which the church calendar has placed the season of Advent. Contrary to the season in which it lives, this season of Advent represents for us the very essence of expectancy...signaling the coming of life, not death. The Latin word aventus , from which our word Advent derives, means "Coming." It's earlier meaning, taken from the Greek word parousia , referred specifically to the Second Coming of Christ. In the Christian church, we celebrate