The Blindness of Advent

Fourteen years ago, my grandmother gifted us an ornate advent calendar. It is shaped like a house, and each door is numbered. 

She also sent little ceramic animals that I remember from my own childhood. “Put one in each door,” she wrote in her letter, “and then, each day you can see who is waiting for Jesus to come.”

She also sent M&Ms to sweeten each day of Advent. 

My children- even the ones who did not know my grandmother- still love the Advent house, and they get excited when they see me putting the M&Ms in. When it is their turn to open a door, they never know which beloved little ceramic animal will be waiting on the other side. However, they know by experience that waiting is good and that it pays M&Ms.

We all come at Advent a little blind. None of us knows exactly how the season will go, what gifts we will get, or even if Jesus will return before we open all the gifts on the 25th. Nothing about it is certain except for that, as Christians, we know that waiting on the Lord is good and pays so much more than M&Ms.

When Mary was in the midst of the travail of childbirth in a barn, she did not know all the details of what would happen. Mary, did you know? Well, no. She really didn’t.

Actually, she never saw the multitudes of angels singing over the fields or the bright and shining star leading wise men over the desert. 

In her waiting, she knew only anxiety, pain, and obedience. “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord,” she had said before seeing any proof, “let it be to me according to your word.”

Mary waited through the blindness of Advent and was rewarded by the joy of the incarnation when her firstborn son was born, just as the angel had told her. When she heard about the multitudes of angels and later, when she was visited by the Kingly magi, she treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. The only thing she could see was the baby as she held onto the hopeful expectation of His salvation of her people.

Just as my children do not know what they will find behind their advent house doors, and just as Mary did not know what the outcome of the birth of the Savior would be, we all stumble through the blindness of Advent.

Though we cannot see all the details and events of the future, we do fix our eyes on Jesus as we wait on Him. He is the Author and Perfector of our faith, and faith, after all is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of what we cannot see. 

We celebrate Advent, even as blindmen, because one day, like the blindman who had encountered Jesus, we will say, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”