This week marks the beginning of the Season of Advent, a time of preparation, a time of going toward the coming again of the Messiah, a time of great expectations and great anticipation. This all sounds good, but what exactly does it mean? What is it that we are to anticipate? What is it we are to get ready for? After all, what is it exactly that we are expecting to happen?

If getting ready ... the preparing is seen as : getting our decorations out of the attic and trimming our tree and home ... or lighting a few candles on the Advent Wreath ... or doing our holiday baking .... or complaining about the commercialization of Christmas as we fight the traffic jams to buy a few more presents. What we are preparing ourselves for is a mood of depression, the anxiety and even the rage that accompanies the holiday season.

If we allow ourselves to get so caught up in the secular Christmas, that we miss the real Christmas ... how sad! It is like we are caught between two concepts of Christmas that are best summed in the Christmas Carol “0, Holy Night!” In one sense, “0, Holy Night!,” reflects the awe and wonder of the Christ child entering our world and becoming one of us. On the other hand “Oh, Holy Night!” can also reflect the nightmare of bills that follow the holiday of Christmas.

For a lot of people who faithfully observe the consumer Christmas, Advent is always the prelude to disappointment. For a great majority of folks, Christmas somehow hardly ever quite measures up to their dreams and fantasies. Even for some of those who manage, somehow, to have some of their Christmas wishes fulfilled, the season passes by so quickly that before we know it, New Years Day is there.

However, when we celebrate Advent in a way that has nothing at all to do with the number of shopping days left until Christmas, it is altogether different. Whether it is decorating with the greens, hanging the wreath, placing the Poinsettias or lighting the first Advent candle ... all of these activities invite us to dream dreams of a better world, to allow expectant visions that have nothing to do with sugar-plums dancing in our heads. Advent invites us .... did you get that ... Advent invites us to fill the cup of today with a full measure of tomorrow. Whether I read from Isaiah or Matthew, I find that both of them express the Christian hope for a different, brighter future.

When the prophet Isaiah thought about the advent of God .... I wonder what he envisioned. The kinds of secular advent so many of us celebrate or a focused advent in which one is getting ready for the coming of the Lord! I wonder???

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Dr. Charles M. Wood, II is the pastor of The Christian Church in Logan, and an accomplished instructor of psychology and religion at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College. He is a Christian counselor in Logan - serving, ministering, and donating his time to people from all denominations.

If you would like to contact Dr. Wood, please write: The Logan Banner, c/o The Good Life With Dr. Wood, P.O. Box 720, Logan, WV 25601; or call (304) 752-4658. All letters addressed to Dr. Wood will be forwarded to his office.