Advent, Migration, and Expectation

Happy Thanksgiving, USA-based friends!

The end of the year holiday season has officially started. We had a small Thanksgiving celebration here with a fellow American friend yesterday. It’s quite a bit different from what we’re used to in our home country, but it was intimate, with good food and company.

And next weekend we’re hosting a large celebration at the Maria Skobtsova House (MSH). I’ll be sure to share pictures and updates afterward.

And Thanksgiving leads into the coming season of Advent. As we give thanks for what we have, let us reflect on the beauty of the hope we have that one day our world will be made whole.

Advent starts this coming Sunday. It’s a time of year that wasn’t really observed in my Baptist church growing up, so it’s been a beautiful experience the last number of years tying to understand what it’s all about.

I think the word that stands out most to me when I think about Advent is “expectation.”

As Christmas approaches, we eagerly await the coming of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world. It reflects our expectations of his eventual return and the renewing of creation in his perfect plan.

But as Rachel and I can attest very well, the world is not yet perfect. The Kingdom has not been fully realized.

In a very real way the expectation of Advent is reflected in the everyday lives of the guests at MSH. Some are Christian, some are not, but they all share one thing in common: an expectation of a brighter future, a hope that can’t be extinguished despite the hardships that they face on a daily basis.

Their stories are vastly different, but they have all come to this place determined to attain a new life.

Rachel and I have deeply experienced this sense of determination and expectation in all of its messy, heartbreaking, beautiful, joyful shades. When I think of people I’ve met in my years here, all of these conflicting adjectives spring to mind, and I can think of a specific instance that reflects each of them.

It’s a constant state of contradiction.

Just like our lives as followers of Jesus.

Here in Calais, we’re doing our best to live in the already-but-not-yet expectation of the coming of Jesus. We seek to live out the values of his Kingdom, despite the darkness that surrounds us. We patiently (or sometimes impatiently) await the day that all will be made new.

We look for where our God is already at work in this place, and we see beauty all around us, in the eyes of the happy child, the proud mother, the loving father who have overcome all odds to bring their family on this journey.

We look for places where we can help God’s Kingdom break through, in police violence, xenophobic policies, cold and damp camps, sick women and children. We do what we can, which often isn’t much. But if we work together, we can accomplish more than we’d ever imagined.

And so, as Advent comes, I encourage you to live into that sense of expectation, the sense that although our world is broken and dark, we can bring some little part of the light of a Kingdom where justice and righteousness prevail.

How can you support those in need around you? How can you share the message of expectation with people who need something to hope for?

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Blessings, my friends, and happy season of expectation. Let us live in hope, but not in inactivity. Let us shine the light of the Kingdom wherever we are called.