UPFRONT December 17, 2007 Issue

Anticipate fulfillment

JENNY ROEMER, STAFF EDITOR

When I was a little kid, my parents would buy me an Advent calendar each Christmas season, complete with tiny doors that opened to reveal pictures and chocolates inside. The pictures were usually of doves, evergreen wreaths, or sometimes they depicted scenes from the Bible. I can remember coming home from school, eager to find my Advent calendar and get an afternoon snack. The pictures were fun to look at, but to be honest, I was much more interested in the chocolate!

Recently, I've thought more deeply about the period of Advent. Key words such as anticipation, expectancy, and hope support this time of waiting for the light of the Christ to be distinct to humanity, specifically through Jesus' birth. In this week's issue, Shirley Paulson and Rosalie Dunbar point out that Advent is also associated with penitence and fasting, which, when spiritually viewed, may help us think about ways to make room for God's message of love by leaving old regrets and outgrown character traits behind. And Holly Amans-Kaiser encounters an unexpected blessing as she "prepares her manger," her consciousness, to receive more of God's ideas.

Even as anticipation can be culturally associated with anxiety and uncertainty, the season of Advent brings out the idea that we're all "anticipating the promised joy" (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 566), just like the children of Israel in the Bible. In his lead article, Tony Lobl sheds light on the ways that Jesus' birth was foretold throughout the Old Testament. And that even though the Christ-message had already been present for centuries, the "Messiah would find tangible expression in a form that the children of Israel could see and understand."

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