Yes, this is a Christmas-y post.
Tomorrow’s the second Sunday of Advent season—the four Sundays before Christmas. On this year’s first Advent Sunday, I was flying home from Florida with my phone in a Ziploc. It had tasted too much ocean water to ever want to work again (which sounds pretty relatable). For seven days I was phoneless, and my world slowed. And the timing of phonelessness with Advent was perfect.
I grew up lighting Advent candles each of the four Sundays before Christmas, and I knew it was a way for us to be thinking about Jesus’ birth for a full month, but that was about it. Without growing up in a more liturgical tradition, I didn’t learn until later in life that Advent was deeper than that, designed to prepare us for Christmas in the same way Lent was designed to prepare us for Easter. Advent means “coming,” and it’s the Latin version of the Greek word ‘parousia’: a word used for Jesus’ birth but also for His second coming. So, Advent has a double meaning.
There’s a lot of longing involved in this double meaning. We can look back at Scripture and see how prophets, priests, and people longed for a Messiah for 700 years. We can look at the present, with all its messes, and choose to step out of despair and distraction by longing for the future when Jesus comes to unbreak a world shattered by sinful systems that oppress, divide, and turn our hearts away from what truly matters.
I’m not saying we don’t long in daily life. It’s just that we might not be longing for what’s ultimately (not immediately) ahead—at least not as intensely as the ancients did. And that’s rather terrifying.
Back to my phone…and yours. During much of any given day, depending on our level of technology addiction, we can satisfy or numb our longings as fast as our thumbs can scroll: from international terror threats to celebrity gossip to hometown news to a friend’s milestone, all without processing any of it because our scroll speed is up to us. We are the gods controlling the rate at which our pocket computers churn out information curated to our preferences. But outside of how we spend our time, so much of life is not up to us—like the timing of God’s cosmic plan to return all things to himself. Distractions can pull us away from longing or cause us to long instead for all the things less ultimate than the final defeat of sin and death. Our daily longings may fall far short: after all, it’s been 2021 years and everyone’s still waiting for someone to fix all this.
It’s not primitive to long for the big things laid out in Scripture; it’s profound. It’s faith-fueled, future-forward thinking. It’s a longing that vivifies. Because we all know that longing without hope kills us.
How are your longings this Christmas? Do you long for…less than you could? Ephesians 1:10 sums up the highest longing: “And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth” (NLT). If you need motivation to long for Christ in a new way, read Ephesians 1—it’s not a traditional Advent reading, but it lays out all Christ is and promises to be.
Through my broken phone, God called out my diminished ability to long. Without an instant connection to anyone and everyone, I was given the gift of delay. And I liked it. So much so that, even though I could log on to social media through my laptop, I chose not to, relishing in my relative disconnection and the headspace it afforded me to long with the ancients for the things of God, not just for the latest updates. Though I’m back to having a phone, I’ve set my heart toward more longing this Advent. I invite you to the same.