It’s now the third week of Advent, so this week I’m going to try to write about three things I see each day that show me a glimpse of God’s Advent light peeking through.

This morning at church, a while before worship began, I was near the front door just chatting with some people. I noticed some movement outside, and I went out to see what it was. It was birds – hundreds and hundreds of small black birds. They were covering the trees across the parking lot from the church building, and as I watched, they all flew in synch to alight on the sand mound. A few minutes later, they all flew again and landed in the cemetery on the other side of the church. I followed them, and watched them for several minutes. I’ve seen this kind of bird behavior before (twice, I think), and I always find it fascinating. Hundreds and hundreds (thousands?) of birds, behaving as though part of one large organism. It was hypnotic. I feel like I want to come up with a connection between the birds and God, but I can’t see it. But that’s okay. Sometimes something is just so bizarre and so amazing that you don’t have to understand it – and sometimes, that’s how God’s light appears.

The second sign of God’s light was the Blue Christmas service we held this afternoon. This is a very important worship service to me, one that I started many years ago at my congregation, and which I am very loathe to give up. The idea of this service is that the holidays are hard for some people, because of grief or some other reason. This service is designed for them, and focuses very deliberately on the hope that Christmas offers, the light shining in the darkness. This service is always a sign of God’s grace to me, and this year was no different.

The third sign, I think, was how thoughtfully and gently my family treated my request to not have any birthday celebration this year. Today was my birthday, but in the past few years, I have started to not like my birthday, and really not like the idea of celebrating it. I’m not sure how it started, but at this point I really feel like I’d like to just be ignored on this day, no “happy birthday” songs, no gifts, nothing. I find that very few people understand this, and very few are willing to go along with it. But my family is, and I am grateful.

That’s where I saw the light of God today, the third Sunday of Advent.

Image by Bruno from Pixabay