Seven Reflections
Table of Contents
A Note from Ron
Part One — Recovering Advent
What Advent Is (Part 1)
What Advent Has Become (Part 2)
Part Two — The Season We Forgot
Advent and the Season We Forgot
Our Renewed Awakening to Advent
Part Three — Reflections in the Light
The Night Shines Like the Day (Part One) The Night Shines Like the Day (Part Two) Emmanuel and the Living Truth of Advent
A Note from Ron
There is a particular beauty in Advent that explains why I feel compelled to write during this season. It reminds me to stop long enough to notice what is already true. In that way, Advent feels like a Shabbat of sorts. It creates a pause before celebration, a moment of rest that prepares the heart for joy. Writing becomes part of that pause. It helps me make room, to recognize God’s nearness through Messiah Jesus, and to receive the life He is already imparting before the celebration begins.
Merry Christmas! Liessa and Ron
“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.” —John 1:9
Part 1 — What Advent Is….
Advent is the historic Christian season of waiting, reflection, and expectation that leads toward Christmas. The word itself means arrival or coming, which immediately frames the season. Advent is not about rushing ahead. It is about becoming aware of what is coming and allowing that awareness to shape how we live now.
From its earliest expression, Advent has trained the spiritual imagination by orienting the heart in three distinct directions.
First, Advent teaches us to look back. It draws our attention to the first coming of Christ in the incarnation. God entered the world not as an idea or a distant force, but in flesh and time. Advent slows us down long enough to remember that this arrival was deliberate, humble, and costly.
Second, Advent invites us to look within. As we wait, the Spirit works quietly, forming humility, hope, and repentance. This inward attention is not self-absorption. It is the intentionality of making room. Advent reminds us that preparation happens internally before anything is outwardly fulfilled. It’s an inside-out-preparation.
Third, Advent teaches us to look forward. It keeps before us the promise of Christ’s return and the renewal of all things. This forward gaze is not speculation. It is expectancy rooted in trust. Advent forms a people who live with hope because the story is not finished.
This three-directional vision gives Advent its depth. Movement and anticipation come before fulfillment. Waiting is not an interruption. It is part of the design. Advent shapes the heart through longing rather than instant celebration and through hope grounded in God’s faithfulness rather than human optimism.
Historically, Advent emerged in the early centuries of the Church as a season of preparation shaped by these very tensions. Long before it was closely tied to Christmas celebration, Advent focused the Church on watchfulness and expectancy. Over time, the first coming of Christ, His nearness in the present, and His coming again were held together. Advent became the season that taught believers how to live between what has already happened and what has not yet been fully realized.
That context matters. Advent was never meant to be sentimental. It was meant to be formative. It trained believers to live attentively, to recognize God’s movement, and to wait with hope rather than impatience. And yet, for many of us, this is not how Advent has been experienced.
Part 2 — What Advent Has Become
Ron Randle
For many of us, Advent slowly became something we did not recognize or feel the need to recover. It was not rejected outright. It simply faded from view. Over time, December became defined almost entirely by celebration. The waiting disappeared. The longing was shortened. Preparation gave way to activity.
In many churches, Advent was reduced to a background idea rather than a lived season. Christmas arrived early, both culturally and ecclesiastically. Decorations went up. Music shifted quickly. The tone moved immediately to joy and celebration, leaving little space for reflection or expectancy.
What was once a season that trained the heart to wait became a season we hurried through.
At the same time, church life increasingly revolved around programs, calendars, and production. December began to fill with events designed to inspire, entertain, and gather people. None of this was ill-intentioned. But in the process, the formative rhythm of Advent was quietly displaced. The slower work of preparation began to feel inefficient in a culture that valued momentum.
As commercialization intensified, marketing rather than formation increasingly set the pace for Christmas preparation. Anticipation was shaped by schedules, promotions, and activities instead of waiting, reflection, and expectancy. What had once prepared the heart for Christmas gradually shifted toward preparing for the event of Christmas itself.
Advent also became misunderstood. For some, it felt overly formal or liturgical. For others, it seemed unnecessary, even distracting from a focus on Christ. And yet, without realizing it, what was lost was not Christ-centeredness but the very practices that once kept Christ at the center. The Church learned how to celebrate His birth, but slowly forgot how to wait for Him.
What Advent has become for many is a shortened pause, a nod to tradition, or a candle lit without much reflection. But beneath that reduction is a deeper hunger. A longing for meaning that is not rushed. A desire for hope that is not manufactured. A need for rhythms that acknowledge both the brokenness of the world and the promise that God remains at work.
That is why Advent has begun to speak again. Not as ritual, but as recovery. Not as nostalgia, but as formation. In a hurried and noisy world, Advent offers a way to slow down and notice what God is doing. It reminds us that movement and anticipation still come before fulfillment. That waiting is essential to a growing faith. And, when rooted in God’s faithfulness, hope is never wasted.
Advent and the Season We Forgot
Ron Randle and Liessa Randle
There is a quiet rhythm in the Christian story that many believers no longer recognize. It is the rhythm of waiting before rejoicing, longing before fulfillment, preparation before celebration. Advent was given to the Church for this very reason. It teaches us to slow down, to listen, to stretch the heart toward the promise that God is drawing near. For centuries this season shaped the imagination of believers and held them in a place of hope they could not manufacture on their own. Advent was never meant to be a countdown to gifts. It was never intended to serve as the sentimental prelude to Christmas. Advent formed the soul to feel the weight of longing and the joy of God’s arrival at the same time.
The word itself means “coming” or “arrival.” That single word carries the entire drama of redemption. Advent takes us back to the moment when God stepped into our world. It brings us into the present where the Spirit continues His quiet work. And it stretches our eyes forward to the day when Christ will return and restore all things. Advent holds past, present, and future in one sacred tension. It teaches us that the story is larger than our moment, that hope is more than emotion, and that longing is not weakness but preparation.
Through most of church history Advent began the Christian year. Not with noise but with expectation. Not with spectacle but with reflection. For the early believers, Advent was a season that trained the heart to wait on God. Waiting is not passive. It is the soul leaning forward. It is the disciplined pause that allows clarity to rise. Advent asked the Church to sit with longing long enough for hope to take root, because only then could the joy of Christmas be understood.
Yet in many mainline denominations, Advent slowly drifted to the edges. Not because it lacked meaning, but because the culture around us grew louder and faster. The shift was gradual. As society turned December into a commercial season of immediate celebration, churches felt pressured to match the tone. Lights went up earlier. Decorations filled sanctuaries. Christmas carols replaced Advent hymns by the first Sunday after Thanksgiving. People wanted celebration now. Waiting felt unnecessary. Longing felt out of place. The quiet work of reflection was overshadowed by the demand for cheer.
At the same time many churches moved toward simpler worship forms, convinced that liturgical rhythms were too formal, too traditional, or too slow for modern life. Advent, which requires patience and inward attention, became difficult to sustain in a world driven by activity and noise. Other shifts played a role as well. Eschatology faded from the center of preaching. Programs multiplied. December calendars filled with events that required an atmosphere of celebration. Over time, Advent was not rejected. It was simply crowded out.
But the loss has consequences. Without Advent, Christmas becomes detached from its depth. We rush into joy without understanding the longing that makes joy meaningful. We celebrate the birth of Christ without preparing our hearts for the One who came. We sing about peace on earth while bypassing the posture that makes peace possible. Advent guards us from that drift. It slows our pace. It forms a quiet honesty in us. It reminds us that the Gospel is not a seasonal sentiment but the unveiling of God’s redemptive work.
To understand what Advent gives us, we only need to place it beside what now dominates December in our culture. Advent invites us to wait. Commercial Christmas invites us to hurry. Advent trains us to expect God’s movement. Commercial Christmas trains us to expect emotional uplift. Advent is a season of hope grounded in promise. Commercial Christmas is a season of nostalgia grounded in memory. Advent centers Christ. Commercial Christmas centers desire.
The difference could not be clearer. Advent teaches us to receive joy. Commercial Christmas teaches us to manufacture it. One forms the soul. The other distracts it. One tells the truth about our need. The other tries to cover it. Advent begins with longing so that Christmas can arrive with meaning.
Commercial Christmas begins with celebration and often ends in exhaustion.
Advent holds a deeper wisdom. It knows that God often enters quietly. It knows that hope grows in the soil of waiting. It knows that joy becomes durable only when the heart has been prepared to receive it. Advent reminds us that God is not late. He is working in the very places where we feel the most longing and the most need. Waiting is never wasted when God is the One we wait for.
“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.” —John 1:9
Our Renewed Awakening to Advent
Ron Randle and Liessa Randle
(**Some of the spacing shifts in the text are intentional. Certain lines need room. Some thoughts ask for a pause. These pages are meant to be read aloud as much as silently, shaped with a cadence that allows the heart to breathe and reflect.)
Our story with Advent did not begin in childhood nor in the early years of our faith. If anything, Advent lived at a distance from us for most of our lives. We did not misunderstand it. We simply never knew it. And what little we thought we knew created a barrier we never questioned.
For Liessa, that distance began early. She grew up in a conservative Jewish home that was fully kosher and deeply shaped by the rhythms of Jewish identity, practice, and belonging. Anything that resembled Catholic tradition— or Christianity in any form—carried an instinctive aversion. Not anger. Not disrespectful. Just a clear boundary. Advent, with its candles and readings and liturgical movement, belonged entirely to a world outside her own. It remained foreign by design.
My path was different but led to a similar conclusion. I grew up in the Black church tradition, where worship was vibrant, passionate, expressive, and alive. But in that world, I was far removed from the historical structures of the early church. I carried a quiet bias against anything that looked Anglican, Episcopalian, or Catholic. Liturgy was considered stiff, ritualistic, or unnecessary. We believed we had something more authentic, more Spirit-led, more connected to real life. And yet, without realizing it, we lost access to some of the oldest and most formative rhythms the Church ever practiced.
When we later embraced conservative theology, the distance only widened. We learned the doctrines. We valued the authority of Scripture. But with that came a kind of narrowing. Advent was dismissed as ritual. The liturgical calendar was treated as irrelevant. Church life became shaped by programs, theme Sundays, and holiday productions. The focus was on celebration, not preparation. Activity replaced reflection. And somehow, without anyone saying it aloud, the anticipation of Christ’s return was quietly pushed to the margins.
Looking back, it feels contradictory. The very traditions that insisted they were “Christ-centered” had unintentionally removed the practices that kept Christ’s story central. We celebrated Christmas without understanding Advent. We proclaimed the birth of Christ with little attention to the longing that makes His coming meaningful. And we preached the Second Coming of Christ while removing the one season that historically prepared the Church to live in expectation.
All of that began to shift in 2024 when we chose—hesitantly—to walk through an Advent devotional together. We expected a small learning experience. What we found was an awakening.
For Liessa, the imagery of light captured her immediately. She said, “The power of light in the world and the power of the light that overcomes darkness. It helps me see God. When I feel and see the evil in the world, Advent reminds me that light will overcome it.” Her lifelong reverence for the God who creates and sustains light found new clarity in the God who enters the world as Light. Advent became practical to her. Hopeful. A way to see God more clearly in a world filled with chaos.
For me, the meaning of Emmanuel, God with us, became sharper. Advent led me back to the question, What does it mean that Jesus came into a dark world? And what is that darkness? Not simply the evil around us. But the shadows within us that resist the work of God. Advent showed me that repentance is not punishment. It is the preparation of the heart. It makes more room for the One who comes to live with and among us, the nearness of the Spirit, and the Messiah who will come again.
What began as curiosity became something more like recovery. We were recovering a part of the Church’s life that had been denied to us. We were recovering a rhythm of waiting, hoping, and longing that feels necessary in a world that moves too fast and celebrates in a way that is shallow. Advent is teaching Liessa and me that the quiet work of God does not compete with the noise of the world. It simply shines until the noise can no longer hide it.
Now we find ourselves drawn to Advent not as ritual, but as truth. It brings clarity to our understanding of Christ’s birth. It deepens our longing for His return. It confronts the darkness in us with the promise of Light. And it teaches us to hold hope in a world that often feels like it is unraveling.
Advent has become, for us, a new way of seeing the story of God—one we now cannot imagine losing again.
“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.” —John 1:9 November 16, 2025
Part 1 – The Night Shines Like the Day (Inspired by my parents Isabel and Bennie)
Ron Randle
Liessa and I were reading and sharing from an Advent devotional that arrived this week. The focus for the days before Christmas is a collection of testimonies from people who walked through dark seasons and learned to look for God with a different kind of sight. These stories do not smooth out the circumstances. They speak of the Spirit’s movement in slowing us down enough to notice that God has not left. One of the portions we read from Psalm one hundred thirty nine brought this into sharp focus. The psalmist names the fear that darkness might overwhelm him and then discovers that God sees what he cannot. God is near even when the human heart feels hidden. We sat with truths and shared how those words met us.
Psalm one hundred thirty nine verses eleven and twelve: “If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day. For darkness is as light to you.”
After we read this, I began to sing a song from my youth. It was one of those familiar ones my parents sang often. It came from the world they lived in and from the way they talked about their walk with Jesus. As I sang it out loud to Liessa, I stopped and asked her why so many songs from that time spoke of life in such a heavy way. She listened and said something that resonated with me, immediately. She said, “they were heavy because life was heavy and the songs carried their longing for eternity. They carried the hope they could not yet name.”
Those songs wrapped their lives in the only language they knew. They told the truth as they experienced it. They held on to whatever promise they could grasp. They sang because they believed Jesus would make all things new even if they could not see how or when. In their own way they sang the same truth the psalmist declared. The night would not always feel like night. With God, “the night shines like the day.”
I see something else. Their songs may have carried sorrow, but they also carried trust. They believed God heard them. They believed light would come. They believed their story was not finished. And I carry that with me as I enter Advent this year. Hope grows in the dark. Peace rises in the waiting. God meets us even when we have more questions than answers. This is the same assurance the psalmist gives us. Darkness is never final. God is near—the “darkness and light are both alike to him.”
My parents sang those truths as an anchor for their souls. I am only now beginning to see what they were reaching for. Their faith had a melody of its own. I am grateful it powerfully and richly echoes in me to this day.
Part 2 – The Night Shines Like the Day (Inspired by my parents Isabel and Bennie)
Ron Randle
Psalm one hundred thirty nine verses eleven and twelve: If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light becomes night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day. For darkness is as light to you.
It is striking to me how the Spirit takes a passage like this and opens a new vista of truth. There are moments when a familiar verse becomes something more than remembered words. It becomes a lens that interprets life. I never would have imagined that a song I once heard as dark would become something that shines light around me. Yet that is exactly what happened as I sat with these verses, again, from that song.
He Will Understand And Say “Well Done”—Lucy E. Campbell.
Chorus:
Oh, when I come to the end of my journey,
Weary of life and the battle is won,
There will be joy for each trial and temptation.
He will understand all about it and say, “Well done.”
When I was younger, I heard this song as something heavy. It felt shaped by struggle and longing and the weight of a life that had known more loss than rest. But today the words feel different. Light has come to them. They carry a tenderness I did not hear before. They hold both the truth of life’s battles and the promise of the father’s “Well done.”
Psalm one hundred thirty-nine tells me that darkness and light are both alike to him. He sees what I cannot. He holds what feels hidden. That realization is becoming a quiet grace for me. The darker places in my life are being released. The dawn of a new morning is rising. I understand why my parents sang that song with such fervor and trust.
Every day, even in the unfinished places, I can hear him say, “Well done.”
Emmanuel and the Living Truth of Advent
When I step back and allow Advent to speak in its own order, a lasting truth settles in me. The distance between God and humanity was never bridged by my effort, my understanding, or even my desire for closeness. It was bridged by God Himself. Emmanuel becoming man in the flesh is not a supporting detail of faith. It is the center of it.
Advent reminds me that nearness was initiated by God, not achieved by me. God did not wait for humanity to ascend toward Him. He descended toward us. In Christ, God chose nearness over distance, relationship over separation, and grace over demand. The bridge was built entirely by His love.
John gives language to what that nearness carries. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” God did not simply come close. He brought life with Him. He brought light that shines within darkness rather than avoiding it. Emmanuel means “God with us.” John shows me that God with us is God restoring life where life had thinned and giving clarity where darkness had shaped how we see.
This is where I begin to understand the tension I feel. I can give intellectual assent to these truths with relative ease. I believe God is near. I can articulate it clearly. Yet living as though that nearness is real often feels frustrating. The struggle is not disbelief. It is formation.
My instincts have been shaped by convenience and immediacy. I want resolution without waiting, reassurance without surrender, and clarity without cost. God’s nearness does not operate that way. His entreatment is relational, not transactional. Union lived in Him unfolds slowly, inviting trust rather than urgency.
Advent exposes this gap without condemning me for it. It reminds me that the frustration I feel is not the failure of faith but the process of transformation to Emmanuel’s likeness. I often live as though nearness must be maintained by my consistency or protected by my effort. Advent gently corrects that assumption. Nearness is not sustained by my grip. It rests on God’s ability, not mine.
Redemption makes this unmistakable. God’s love did not forgive from a distance. Grace did not restore access. It did not withdraw. Through Christ, God absorbed what separated us so that nearness could be reopened fully and safely. Redemption was never meant to leave me striving toward God. It was meant to place me back inside the relationship. This is the living truth Advent forms in me. Union is not something I achieve. It is something I receive. I do not generate closeness. I respond to it. I do not hold God near. God holds me.
redeemed reality. The light is already shining. The bridge is already built. My life is shaped not by my ability to live in union perfectly, but by His faithfulness to remain near and to carry me into that union over time.
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