Advent is a time of waiting and watching. Poet Malcolm Guite put it this way:
Advent is a paradoxical season: a season of waiting and anticipation in which the waiting itself is strangely rich and fulfilling, a season that looks back at the people who waited in darkness for the coming light of Christ and yet forward to a fuller light still to come and illuminate our darkness.
During this time of year, we remember and celebrate our Lord’s first advent; but we also look forward with eager anticipation to his second advent, when he will make all things new.
The songs below express both our longing for Christ’s second coming and our anticipation of the joy we will experience when he arrives.
The well-known hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is a paraphrase of an ancient antiphon known as “O Emmanuel” (O God with us):
O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Savior:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.
This instrumental rendition of the hymn by The Piano Guys is simply splendid!
Caroline Cobb’s “Oh Righteous Branch” draws on messianic imagery and titles found in Isaiah 11, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, and Malachi 4, forming them into prayers for the consummation of God’s kingdom. The refrain is simple yet beautiful:
Hallelujah, Jesus we wait for you
Hallelujah, Jesus come soon come soon!
Charles Wesley’s 1744 hymn captures well the Church’s longing for the day when we will be with Christ forever in the New Earth. This is a contemporary rendition by Shane & Shane.
One of my favorite tracks from Sandra McCracken’s album Psalms. The chorus captures the Church’s anticipation of great joy at the future marriage supper of the Lamb:
We will feast in the house of Zion
We will sing with our hearts restored
He has done great things, we will say together
We will feast and weep no more
Finally, here’s a video that reminded me of lines from Once in Royal David’s City (“he feels for all our sadness, and he shares in all our gladness”) that I meant to quote in yesterday’s sermon but forgot to. The part where the little girl with Down Syndrome reads from Mary’s Magnificat about God humbling the mighty and exalting the lowly is quite moving!