I have not kept a holy Advent season. As my priest remarked, "Advent is the one time of the year in which the Mother Church is just plain out of kilter with our American culture. But by dumping Advent", he continues, "we lose the beauty of our heritage." It is a mini Lent. There are beautiful readings, beautiful hymns. We are to rejoice in Christ coming. We long for beauty.
Yesterday I was listening to Hugh Hewitt, and on his program he had Professor Allen White, from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, who teaches Shakespeare. But his real love is music. He spent three hours running us through the Messiah, which we all tend to think of as Christmas music, "Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace", but in fact continues through Easter to the Ascension of Christ. The last copy we had of the Messiah was on a 33 1/3 record.
Today,at last, I was going to do some Advent reading. I have this very dopey Bible. Because it is meant to be read so you can read the Bible in a year, with Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and Epistle readings each day, you can imagine how hard it is to locate the precise reading that you want,if you have just a Bible verse in mind. I did know that Isaiah was somewhere in the 900 pages. So, I flat out opened the book, and there was ,
"For a child is born to us, a son is given to us.
The Government will rest on his shoulder.
And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
This woman is wacko, cuckoo bananas, but I choose to think God was giving me a little sign. He said, "Here, now get a little holy."