In the basket of stones I keep on our back porch is a stone with the word “patience” on it.  I use these stones at times to help me pray, and I often need to pick up patience!  If the commercialization of Christmas cannot be ignored, it may take a great deal of patience to avoid jumping before Thanksgiving  into extravagant celebration of Christmas without waiting and working through the days of Advent. “Waiting for Christmas is like waiting for a star to fall. We know it will come, streaking across our lives with promised Light, but we can grow weary from the Advent strain of waiting.”

Can I take time to lean into the meaning of Christ’s coming?  Can I put down my lists of things to do, and simply be?  Waiting is hard. I need patience. I want to anticipate the fullness of the coming of Christ. Let me not hurry Christmas.

May I have a deep, calm resistance against the riptide of the season’s hurry.

While swell upon swell of Christmas laps at the very edge of our lives,

you call me to an Advent way of living;

deep calling to deep,

love bearing love,

Word becoming flesh,

Slow, labored, beloved Patience,

come, teach me to trust in Advent’s buoyancy;

suspend me, outstretched,for  the coming of Christ.     Amen

adapted from   Simply Wait, Cultivating Stillness in the Advent Season, by Pamela Hawkins