This Sweet Advent Season

This season, this Advent, is anticipation and expectation and longing all in one. Every year, it's the season I step out of the fray and seek stillness and silence and slowness...because my soul needs Sabbath rest like that. The world screams at me with sales and bright lights and busyness, but my Savior is whispering be still, be near. My Father knows all my anxieties and worries and restlessness, and He doesn't turn a blind eye. He instead promises a life full of freedom and glory, a life possible because His son came to breathe our air and live among us and make a way.

This season, my soul rests in Him. This Advent, my soul longs for Him. Each morning, I read the words that tell His story, and I engrave them on my heart bit by bit. I commit the words to memory so His story becomes mine too. I pause, I praise. This season is the culmination of all I've learned and embraced of selah this year.

For to us, for to me, for to you, a child is born. To us, to me, to you, a son is given. The government will be on His shoulders. The burdens I feel? They, too, will be on His shoulders. My sin? On His shoulders. He takes it from me, instead gives me life, and I breathe that in gratefully this season. This life feels fresh and new and stunning, like a breath of the winter air laced with a chill that goes straight to your bones.

The lights glow warmly on the tree and I think about what it would have been like to see that star light up the night sky. That same tree, alive and green and beautiful now, reminds me of the tree that comes-- the one that has just two beams and brings an awful death that is beautiful in a wholly different way. Oh, selah.

This story brings me to my knees again this year. What a Savior, that He would choose this path just to bring us close to Him. What a King, that He would leave all glory to be where we are. What a Lord, that He would choose total humility and humanity so we know His love for is as real as He is. O come, let us adore Him.