You've probably never heard of the Thomas Hardy poem, Christmas 1924.

It's short and highlights the tension of Advent and Christmas.

Peace on Earth was said, we sing it and pay a million priests to bring it.

After 2,000 years of Mass, we've got as far as poison gas.

The point is the joy to the world and peace on earth that resound in Christmas carols and

hymns are confronted by the sickness, wars, and disease that we see all around us.

How do we make sense of the fact that as Christians, we live in the tension of the already

and not yet?

That's where Advent can help us.

Thank you. already and not yet. That's where Advent can help us. I love that poem by Thomas Hardy. It's a little bit punchy, right? But it does highlight

this great tension that we experience as followers of Jesus. Jesus Christ came into the world.

We sing joy to the world, right?

We have these hymns, these Christmas carols, and yet it seems like when we look around us,

there is not a lot of joy, not a lot of peace.

And so how, again, do we deal with this tension that we experience?

Advent breaks in on our sin-torn world just like the Lord Jesus did. And it's that period of preparation that many Christians in the Western Church go through,

typically about four weeks.

And the best, in terms of scholarship, where know, where did Advent come from? The best answer

that liturgical scholars give is that somewhere around the fourth through the seventh centuries,

there were these fasts that were taking place during the preparation for epiphany. And these fasts came to be associated with, you know, this period before Christmas, you think,

December, early January, and that this, especially by the time of Gregory the Great,

morphed into what the Western Church has called Advent.

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