Advent 2020: Fasting as
Vacancy

Activity: Purge

As we open this season of Advent, take notice of darkness. Perhaps where you live, you are entering winter soon, and daylight hours are lessening with nighttime darkness lengthening. If it is late spring where you live, winter’s darkness is still in your not so distant past. What is darkness like? What characterizes it? Take a moment and write your thoughts:

In many situations, darkness can foster fear: monsters under the bed, propensity for increased crime, or simply not being able to see what might trip your feet in the dark. But darkness can focus your attention, too. When it is daylight, many things in a million colors can be seen - trees, mountains, flowers, people, animals, and buildings, to name a few. But when it is dark and light is limited, only a few things can come into focus at any one time. Darkness helps you to simplify your focus, to zero in on what is most important, most pressing. If you are walking in the dark by flashlight or torch, you can only focus on the next few steps in front of you. If you are camping in the wilderness, your campfire’s flame and warmth only reaches so far.

When it comes to hospitality, darkness helps us focus, too. Candlelight dinners draw our attention to who and what is at the table. The darkness is transformed from cold to warm, from alone to close community. In this positive space, we can also experience hope.

Hope in the midst of the darkness does not diminish pain or suffering, but draws your attention away from chaos to focus in on what is most important, most pressing, most present before you.

Take inventory of the events and circumstances around you. What is going on in your life and world? Now, audit your response: where is the hope of Jesus bursting through painful or dark circumstances? Can you see it? What’s happening?

Read today’s scripture, as listed in the Devotional Calendar. Make note of observations. Read again. Ponder words or phrases that stand out to you.

At some point today when it is dark outside, turn off all the lights inside, except for one lamp or candle. What do you notice? What becomes important? With whom do you now share this space? Fast from light to let the darkness teach you to focus on the hope of Christ.

Journal about your thoughts, reflections, and questions.