Happy Advent Greetings!

Advent is the perfect time to practice waiting. As military family members and service members, it seems we are always practicing waiting. There is an old adage that is taught to new service members- “hurry up and wait”.

So, we as military members, we KNOW waiting. We wait for orders, for Household Goods, for deployments to start (so that they get over faster) and we wait for deployments to end (rather impatiently at the very, very end). We wait for doctor’s appointments and in line at the commissary. We wait for RR to start and don’t want it to end.

However, if we practice waiting, we will hear what our Lord was saying to us when he sent us Jesus, all those years ago; in the form of a helpless newborn babe. God was telling us that in the waiting- you grow, in the waiting- you learn and in the waiting all of these times, the waiting teaches us how to be truly grateful and how to experience Christmas as Mary and Joseph did so long ago.

For on Christmas morn, in a manager, in Bethlehem town, all those years ago, a baby was born and placed in swaddling clothes. Which, as I’ve just learnt, the lambs that were sacrificed in the temple on Passover were placed in swaddling clothes; so that the lambs could be a perfect sacrifice to God. So, Jesus, the Lamb of God, was placed in swaddling clothes to be our perfect sacrifice on Good Friday. God loves us so much that he sent his only begotten son to be born on Christmas morn. And as the carols go- “we shall call him wonderful, counselor, prince of peace”.

“Our hearts are restless until we rest in thee”- Saint Augustine of Hippo

Have a very blessed Christmas and a Happy New year!