Thanksgiving to Advent

My parents joined us for several days to celebrate American Thanksgiving and they left this morning trekking their way south through a light and powdery blanket of snow that settled here overnight.  The snow inspired me to let the kids set up our little Christmas tree today and the calendar caused me to turn my thoughts toward preparations for Advent.

festive Saturday breakfast table

Early morning snow play

snow covered cedar

candlelight comfort

Every year we transition from Thanksgiving to Advent, a strange segue in many ways. But there’s at least one thread that passes through these very different celebrations. 

The Pilgrims left the Old World, hoping to find in the New World a place where they could worship in liberty. A place to be with God. They did and did not find it. Since the first century, Christians here and everywhere have been living in the tension of having, and waiting to have, the New World. 

Come, Lord Jesus.

Advent is a period of focusing on the longing we feel for the true New World, when the dwelling place of God will be with man and each man will sit beneath his tree and we will be home again on earth. New Earth. We long for that New World, the new heavens and new earth, completed recreation in and by the Second Adam. He was conceived as a man as the Holy Spirit hovered over the formless void of the virgin Mary’s womb. So began the New World. He arrived and nothing has been precisely the same since. Glory to God, the King has come.

Read the rest of The New World and the New World by S.D. Smith from The Rabbit Room.