Fleming Rutledge: “Advent begins in the dark”
Advent teaches us to delay Christmas in order to experience it truly when it finally comes. Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness. ...
The authentically hopeful Christmas spirit has not looked away from the darkness, but straight into it. The true and victorious Christmas spirit does not look away from death, but directly at it. Otherwise, the message is cheap and false. Instead of pointing to someone else’s sin, we confess our own. “In our sins we have been a long time” [Isaiah 64]. Advent begins in the dark.
- Fleming Rutledge, “Advent Begins in the Dark,” from The Bible and the New York Times
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