Of all seasons of the Church year, Advent is my favourite. Christmas is on the horizon, but just for a short time we wait, aware that we’re held between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Normally, waiting is something that we put up with, but there’s something about Advent that shows us that waiting is part of the point.

The approach to Christmas is marked out for many of us by hopes.

We hope our gifts will be well received, that our loved ones won’t argue, that we’ll have enough money, and enough patience to get through the holidays and back out into the new year.

We hope we won’t be on flood alert, and we hope that the car will get through its MOT without digging too much into our pocket. And those are real, adult hopes, not a tinselly wish-list, but hopes based in experience and anxiety.

We know what it’s like to be stuck in a house with people arguing, what it’s like to feel over-stretched financially, and to worry about more rain in the weather forecast.

We hope, because we know what it’s like to struggle, and wouldn’t it be great if this year was different?

Much of what we hope for is on a small scale. That doesn’t mean it’s trivial. We think on a domestic scale, and that’s exactly what Christmas can enable us to see – that the great hopes arrive for us in human proportions, as soft warm skin, rather than as monumental marble statues. If we can understand how important everyday human life is then we’re pretty close to understanding God with us.

But all that is to jump ahead to Christmas, and we’re still, happily, in Advent, where we’re encouraged to spare a bit of time for other hopes.

Advent is a time to remind ourselves of the bigger picture and to look beyond home.

It’s time to look over our lives, and to think about a kind of personal MOT: what’s worn out; what’s working well; what do we need to keep an eye on? The Christian idea of preparing for judgement sounds quite off-putting, but Advent holds us to thinking seriously – and hopefully – about ourselves and our place in the world.

Before we draw our focus in to the domestic scale of Christmas, Advent enables us to wait with our hopes, to think through our fears, and to understand ourselves as parts and participants in a new world of possibility that’s just beginning.