Advent: A Season of Longing

By Erin+ Roy, Community Life & Outreach Director, All Saints Church, Dallas, TX

Can we be both full of longing and full of joy?

Advent is a season of longing. We look up, beyond the day-to-day busyness of our lives. We remember Christ’s first coming, and we grow in longing for his second coming, when he will make all things new. Scripture describes this in-between time as the Church groaning as in childbirth; indeed, one of the primary images of Advent is a nine-months-pregnant woman on the road to Bethlehem. Discomfort. The impatience of waiting. The pain that brings about new life.

And yet, during Advent, a word we are given is “joy.” We light a pink candle on our wreaths, a brightness that pierces the ever-darker days. The third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for “rejoice.” We are called to rejoice because our King is coming. The groaning of childbirth will cease, and his reign will bring the end of death and disease. We will wait and weep no more.

The canticle we hear from Isaiah 12 instructs God’s people to hold together the present-tense reality (longing) and our future-tense hope (joy). “The Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense.” That is true today, even in the darkness. God proves himself again and again. We ask and seek and knock, and he provides. That gives us a firm foundation from which to declare in the future tense: “and he will be my Savior.” The experience of God’s present goodness cultivates our confidence in his future provision. “I will trust in him and not be afraid.”

Longing and joy, reality and hope, today and tomorrow are held together here in Advent. In these days, God gives us the gift of reality. We don’t need to dress up or tidy up or cover up to pretend to be the people, the family, the church we wish we were. We can have an honest Advent. We can admit that we need our King to come to make all things new. Things are not as they should be. We are groaning. We long for more.

But even in that place, even now, God brings us the gift of joy. C.S. Lewis writes that joy isn’t something we own but something that points us beyond itself: “All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be.’” In Advent in particular, we long for something we do not possess. As +Philip Jones says, “the best is yet to come.”

Until then, we heed Isaiah’s words:

“Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy, for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.” Isaiah 12:6 NRSV

 

After graduating from Rice University, Erin+ Roy served as a campus staff member with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at OU and then SMU, which brought her to Dallas in 2011. Soon after, an invitation from a friend led her to visit an Anglican church plant called All Saints Dallas, which became her introduction to the Anglican tradition. She has a Masters Degree in Divinity from Wycliffe College in Toronto, and was ordained a deacon in 2023. Erin brings her passion for outreach, spiritual formation, and leadership development to her coordination of Women’s Ministry, Pastorates, and Community Outreach at All Saints. She is married to Kyle and has three young children.