First Week of Advent: Hope

     I always look forward to Christmas, and the whole holiday season, but this year I found myself particularly looking forward to Advent itself -to joining with Christians everywhere and throughout the ages in eager anticipation of our coming Christ. I was genuinely excited for this day to come. So, out of my excitement, I decided to try something new this year. Each week I'll post a (hopefully) short reflection on that week's theme, as well as a picture and playlist that fits. Today's post will be a tad longer since I thought it might be a good idea to give a very quick overview of the Advent season for anyone who isn't familiar with it. 
      Advent is a part of the Christian church (liturgical) calendar which begins a countdown of sorts until Christmas. It officially begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas (November 30 this year), and is a season of waiting, expectation, and joy. The word "advent" means "coming" and Christians celebrate both the first coming of Christ at Christmas, as well as look forward to His second coming in the future. Each week of Advent has a particular theme. These are hope, peace (or faith), joy, and love. There is a little variation between churches as to which themes are celebrated on which weeks, but the four themes remain the same. Some Christians use an Advent wreath (made up of four candles in a circle surrounding one large candle) during this time and each week they light a new candle until Christmas day when the four outside candles and the central candle are all lit. Typically each candle in the wreath represents one of the themes of Advent, but they can also be associated with different characters in the Christmas story, such as the prophets, wisemen, shepherds, angels, and Mary and Joseph. The candles help serve as a reminder not simply of the themes of the week or that Christmas is approaching, but that the first Christmas was the moment when Christ, our Light, became human and entered our world, becoming the fulfillment of the name "Emmanuel" -"God with us. 
     Hopefully this quick overview helped. Now on to week one: hope.

     Advent is a season of waiting, and I find it fitting that the theme of the first week is hope. Surely waiting, which can be rather difficult, feels more worthwhile and endurable when there is hope that someday the wait will be over. The thing is though, hope is not simply optimism or wishful thinking. It may often be used that way today, but hope is more accurately seen as the expectation of something, specifically something you know will happen. Merriam-Webster says the definition of the verb "to hope" is "to expect with confidence." On this first day of Advent, we are reminded of the Jews who waited many centuries for their coming Messiah. They could wait with hope, because they knew that God fulfills His promises, but this did not necessarily mean that the waiting was easy. 

      The carol commonly associated with this first week is "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." The first verse speaks from the perspective of the Israelites, "groaning" in exile while waiting for their Messiah. The exile the song speaks of was not even the end of their waiting as it was followed by approximately 4 centuries of seeming silence from God. I guarantee that there were days when it was very difficult to hold on to hope, to trust in the promise that the Messiah would come. I'm sure some gave up; some decided that they'd been waiting too long. The dark beauty of this carol, which is written in a minor key, speaks to their anguish. For others though, perhaps it was only the hope of the coming Messiah that kept them going day to day. Ultimately the chorus reminds us that the Messiah did indeed come, and this is cause for great rejoicing. However, to get to the celebration, you have to make it through the groaning.
     This week as Advent begins, the story of the Jews reminds me of three lessons I want to remember this season. 1) Sometimes waiting is hard. There's no way around it. There will be times of tears and anguish and groaning. There is comfort for the trying times though when we know that our hope has a firm foundation. 2) Hope doesn't necessarily mean that we get exactly what we want. The Jews of Jesus' time expected a Warrior King who'd overthrow the Romans and release them from oppression. They did not expect a unknown peasant from a backwater town. 3) Some things are worth the wait. Jesus may not have matched the expectations of the Jews, but what Jesus brought was so much more beautiful, and certainly much better. Rather than simply taking care of the immediate physical salvation of the Jews, Jesus came to bring them eternal, spiritual salvation. Furthermore, the salvation Jesus brought was not just for the Jews, but for the whole world. It was the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham that "all nations on earth will be blessed" through his offspring (Gen. 22:18). The realization of the hope of the Jews, ultimately brought hope for everyone, and that is indeed reason for rejoicing. 

     If you're looking for suggestions of ways to celebrate this Christmas season, Rachel Held Evans has  26 Ideas for Advent. Besides this post, I'm going to try doing a daily devotional this year, like this one from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary or this one from Luther Seminary. For anyone wanting to know more about the liturgical calendar, here's Mark D. Robert's Introduction to the Christian Year. 

Colors of Fall

     I've been planning for some time to do a post with some of the lovely fall foliage here in New England, but time keeps running away with me. I'd been delaying because I wanted to get some shots of the mellower colors that appeared in November, but school is not conducive to free time. Maybe I'll still get some pictures before the colors disappear completely. In the mean time, here is a collection of pictures to show the vibrant and varied colors I get to enjoy every October here in Massachusetts. Click any picture to see a larger version.

Happy November (12/30)

Some rather chilly, but adorable, tourists in Salem

A sentiment all Salem shared during
October

     Ah November. I have been looking forward to this month for a while. I love it so much. I am a bit biased because my birthday happens to be at the beginning of November, but I think I’d love this month even if it wasn’t my birth month. I love the cooler temperatures, muted colors, stormy skies, delicious fall foods, hot beverages, warm clothing, and so many other things. I’m not alone in my love of November either. While I’m sure there are November-lovers everywhere, each with their own reasons for their love, I’m guessing it’s rare to find entire cities where all the citizens look forward to a single month, but that is exactly the case in Salem, MA. The reason is simple: November means Halloween is over and, most importantly, the tourists go away. Life can finally return to normal. Last weekend was still rather busy as the tourists tried to squeeze in some last bit of revelry before heading home, but soon the crowds began to shrink and the locals dared venture outside again. Many of my coffee shop's regular customers stopped coming during the month of October, at least on the weekends, so it's been fun to see many of them again, and it's been almost laughable how many locals greeted each other with "Happy November!" during this last week. 

The House of the Seven Gables

     So you may be wondering now just how bad/crazy October actually was. The answer to that question depends though on a couple different factors. If you're talking about the tourists in Salem, then it was a rather unpleasant month. There are often so many people that walking through downtown is stressful and driving is almost impossible. Even my daily commute was sometimes frustrating because the tourists crowded the afternoon train as well. Working at the coffee shop on the weekends was a lesson in patience to be sure. However, I cannot complain too much about the tourists because I joined their ranks, briefly, when my parents came to visit toward the end of October. My sister and brother in-law even came up to Salem as well and together the five of us played tourists, walking along the wharf, touring the House of the Seven Gables, visiting the Old Burying Point Cemetery, and people-watching all the oddly costumed people in downtown. I even got to introduce my family to some very cool people: my coworkers (at least some of them). 

      October wasn't all craziness and dealing with ridiculous tourists though. My sister and I both have birthdays right around Halloween, so when my parents were visiting we celebrated both of our birthdays a bit early with a delightful family outing. My brother in-law's family even came down from Vermont to join us in exploring the ICA and eating out in Boston's Chinatown. It was a simply smashing day. It was also the second birthday celebration for me since I'd already had a combined birthday palaround with coworkers earlier in October. This year's birthday has been rather prolonged since I have not really stopped celebrating my it yet, even though it was earlier this week. Besides the parties with my coworkers and family, I was also spoiled by my classmates and the girls in my Bible study this week, and next week I'm going to the final Anberlin concert in Boston as a birthday present! It's going to be so good. I wasn't sure for a while that the concert would even work because I didn't know my exam schedule for next week until one week ago, and two exams were actually planned for next week, but one is the day of the concert, and the other one was just moved, so I can actually enjoy a bit of fun amid the school craziness. 

Some friends promoting PA week at the
beginning of October

     School was definitely the thing that made October the busiest. I expected this since the PA program is certainly the biggest thing in my life right now, but I think I'd forgotten just how overwhelming it can be at times. The clinical medicine class in particular often feels like trying to drink from a fire hose. For our cardiology exam we covered everything over just two weeks (20 hours of lecture), our final lecture was on a Friday, and our test was on the following Monday. It's a lot to try to not only gain a basic knowledge of the material, but really learn how to apply it, especially in such a short amount of time. So far this term we've covered preventive medicine, dermatology, HIV, infectious diseases, cardiology, pulmonary, and gastrointestinal conditions. In one week we'll be tested on endocrinology and then it's just otolaryngology before the final. There is so much to learn, but it helps to think that we will soon be using this information when we start our clinical clerkships in the spring, and I have some amazing girls to study with, which has been such a help. So, I guess I can just say in closing that, yes, October was a tad crazier and busier than I would have liked, but it was all worth it in the end. I am definitely happy that there are just a couple exams before finals though. :)

This picture just makes me giggle.