IN December, our days can quickly rush towards Christmas. Lights go up, shops hum, songs blare.

The world around us becomes brightness and noise. But Advent invites us to something very different. It invites us to wait.

Advent is a time of preparation, not through noise and busyness, but through quiet expectation.

It is about stillness and reflection, about waiting, about sitting with the darkness and watching for the light to come.

Advent coincides with the darkest days of the year, when the nights are longest and our world can feel shadowy.

This time of waiting for the light is not just a Christian tradition.

Midwinter has long been marked by festivals that celebrate the return of light during the darkest time of the year.

The Winter Solstice, around December 21, is the turning point when days begin to grow longer again.

For millennia this has been a season to feel the weight of darkness, invite the light into it, and trust in what we cannot yet see.

We live in a culture that often shies away from darkness and stillness though.

It’s easy to fill time with distraction, to push aside feelings of sadness and fear and focus on the brightness and noise around us instead. But Advent says that darkness is not a thing to fear. It is a place for transformation.

Seeds germinate in dark soil. Stars shine in the night sky. Light emerges from a stable hidden away in Bethlehem.

This Advent, it’s ok to wait. It’s okay to stop. If you long for stillness, seek it.

Perhaps that looks like stepping outside in the evening and noticing the winter stars. Perhaps it’s letting a candle’s flame guide your thoughts.

Perhaps it’s putting away the bright screen and noticing whatever stirs within you. Sometimes stopping and noticing what emerges is hard. It’s ok to ask someone else for help to do so.

Darkness can be a gift. It gives us permission to acknowledge hard things - losses, uncertainties, struggles.

Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it - grieving is a sign of spiritual health.

Not pasting optimism or denial over things.

Sitting with grief, with uncertainty, with darkness whether in self, relationships, community, or planet is spiritually healthy. And Advent reminds us that we are not alone in that waiting.

It is a season of hope, not because things are easy, but because the light will eventually come.

Advent is about that coming light.

It invites us to turn our attention to what is coming: the birth of Jesus, “God with us”. But it also shows us that the journey to light passes through dark, and that both have their place.

So as the world rushes toward Christmas, may we give ourselves permission to pause.

To sit with the quiet and trust that dawn comes. Let us recognise the darkness, and wait.

Elizabeth Wainwright

Crediton Congregational Church