An Artist’s Advent

Wait. Prepare.

The fulfillment is coming.

Wait. Prepare.

Every year, I begin teaching my church choir a new anthem for Christmas in August. To prepare for Christmas is not the work of four weeks, but more than four months. To prepare to begin preparing takes even longer. First, I must search for music suited to our particular ensemble, and then, once it arrives, prepare myself to prepare others.

The fulfillment is delayed. Bring plenty of oil for your lamps.

Prepare.

Of course, there have been many other Christmases before this one, many years of service that taught me how to serve. Before that came long years of training, countless hours spent in practice rooms, recitals given, papers written, rehearsals that lasted until midnight. Ensembles and solos, juries and competitions, theory tests and history grades—all to prepare for dreams that had nothing to do with Midnight Mass or Holy Week or the thousands of Sundays in between.

The fulfillment is coming like a thief in the night, to catch us unaware.

Prepare.

Books take longer than music to prepare. Books linger in my spirit long enough to grow with me, to be shaped as I am shaped by the trials and lessons of time. We are symbiotic, the book and I, engaging and challenging each other to be better, go deeper, evolve. The Advent of a novel lasts not only until the story is told, but until it has taught me all that it can—as an artist, as a person, as a Christian.

May it be fulfilled in me according to your word.

Prepare.

We do not wait passively in Advent, but with the passion of rehearsing until midnight or writing a chapter’s fifteenth draft. Every advent we’ve ever lived has prepared us to prepare ourselves anew. Christ is not born in us only to leave. He lives with us, using each of life’s fulfillments to prepare us for the day when He comes to us again.

The fulfillment is coming.

Wait. Prepare.