So we begin the liturgical season of Advent. With this hope that we have need of each other. With this hope of waiting for the Savior with each other. Advent is a season of divine anticipation. We know Jesus has been born, but we enter the anticipation again. We enter into the waiting.

Who likes waiting?

It’s more fun to wait together. This is part of the magic of Christmas. 

Even for you whose hope has been smashed.

We live in this disenchanted world where magic seems to be only saved for Christmas. This Advent season I give you the enchanting story of a baby born to a virgin who changed the world.

We love science and technology, I love science and technology, but we’ve lost our ability to see God, to be enchanted by God.

God must make sense somehow. I can’t trust something or someone who doesn’t make sense. Trust issues with God are triggered. Hope is too risky.

Guess what? God is larger than what makes sense. So we have a baby born to a virgin and born into poverty.

Prayer is harder when you are disenchanted. Prayer seems too much like magic. We struggle when the magic doesn’t work so it’s safer to stay disenchanted. Why get your hopes up with prayer?

Yet we pray when we don’t know what to do or say. “I’ll pray for you” becomes those words. Even atheists say it. This is because everyone hallows. To hallow is to make or declare something as holy and sacred. To set apart and make holy.

We pray, “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name.” That’s a good starting point. 

The reason we say “I’ll pray for you,”–even if we don’t believe in prayer or in God or have serious doubts about prayer working–is that when we face great pain, we feel compelled to hallow it, or to set it apart from the normal stuff of daily life.

Hallowing is enchanting.

Disenchantment cannot hallow, and we feel its impotence acutely in the face of suffering.

This is why “I’m so sorry” or “I’ll be thinking of you” feels so inadequate. “Sending my thoughts” feels emptier because what good are your thoughts in this moment of pain?

When pain is deep, we long for enchantment so we want to hallow the moment. Prayer is the only thing up to the task of trying to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.

Prayer might not “work” but it hallows.

We hallow because human life requires a sacred texture. Some things have to be set apart from the common and ordinary flow of events. (Thanks to Richard Beck and my new favorite book, Hunting Magic Eels, for teaching me this.)

This is one of the purposes of the liturgical calendar. This is why we stop to celebrate something called Advent.

Life can be just one day after another after another. But to hallow something means we are setting something apart as special and noteworthy. We come with an expectancy of enchantment, maybe even magic. An answer to prayer about this pain would be magic.

We need to give this moment of life a significance and weight beyond the next Netflix binge. Life is more than workday to workday, entertainment to entertainment, screen to screen. We crave holy days and sacred moments. We need to light candles and sing. All the better when it is with people.

Isn’t your heart awakened and your five senses awakened at Christmas?

I love this quote from a writer I follow, Marcie Alvis-Walker:

“I am convinced that the reason Christmas has remained while other traditions and celebrations have faded from history is that the story sells itself.

“Of course, it’s also true that it endures because the Church endures. But tell me, when was the last time that only the faithful partook in holiday glee? Unless they’re hosted by a church or a religious organization, what office parties are known to gather in reverence of the birth of the Savior?

“…Haven’t you ever wondered at that? This bizarre, unbelievably far-fetched story of angel visitations, a virgin birth, a geriatric birth, a non-verbal priest, some shepherds, a census, some Far-East Asian astrologers, a tyrannical ruler, a baby massacre—and a partridge-in-a-pear-tree—endures.” https://blackeyedstories.substack.com/p/the-arrival-advent-2023-fe4

So I give you the story of a baby born to a virgin, born into poverty and dependency in need of parents.

To become enchanted again is to feel some hope. Life has smashed you. Hope is too risky.

But what if… What if you could feel the magic again?

Make the brave decisions as Advent and then Christmas awakens your senses to the possibility of magic.