My dear niece, and mother of one of the most charming great nieces in the world, sent an online Thanksgiving greeting yesterday including a photograph of their family standing in front of a huge decorated Christmas tree. Their family has a tradition of starting to decorate for Christmas on the day after Halloween, so they have been working at their decorations long enough to have their home looking pretty Christmasy. We, on the other hand, like to wait until Advent to do our decorating, and we aren’t that much into decorating in the first place. Our tradition since we moved to the northwest has been to purchase a live tree from a nursery that we can plant on the farm after Christmas, so we’ll likely get around to getting a tree pretty soon, because we like to help the tree acclimate to being outside by spending a few days on the porch before being brought inside. Live trees have root balls, which makes them pretty heavy, so we’ve been going in for smaller trees, which suits us nicely. We have a large collection of Christmas ornaments, with a lot of fun stories behind them, so we end up stringing lights on our bookcases and ribbons on our stairway and hanging ornaments around the house in other places besides the tree.

One of our Thanksgiving traditions is to ignore Black Friday sales. That makes sifting through social media, especially email and text messages, quick because I automatically delete any messages with the words Black Friday in the description. It also speeds sorting the mail in our mailbox, which since we pay most of our bills electronically contains mostly advertisements and appeals for donations. A quick sort of the mail with an eye to personal correspondence from family and friends allows us to get most of the mail into the recycling bin in just a few seconds.

Today, however, we might brave the crowds and struggle to find parking to go to our favorite independent bookstore. We’ve taken to ordering books from them instead of the huge online bookseller and though they offer the option of having the books shipped to our home, we like going to the bookstore, so usually have them hold them at the store for us to pickup. Bellingham isn’t a really big city, so usually parking is easily available as long as we are willing to walk a couple of blocks, which we usually are. And a crowded bookstore has a different feeling than a shopping mall or big box store.

We get to make the quick turnaround from Thanksgiving to Advent this year because a colleague who serves a small island church near our home is taking a bit of well-earned vacation so we will be leading worship on Sunday. Their service will include the sharing of communion, so leading worship at their church will be a real treat. We’ve become the usual coverage for this pastor when needed, so we’ve gotten to know this congregation and find ourselves really looking forward to seeing the people. It is a small congregation and they really know how to host a wonderful coffee hour. And for us, who have lived most of our lives a thousand miles from the coast, the short ferry ride to the island is a treat every time we take it.

Anticipation is a wonderful complex of emotions and I find Advent to be an especially appealing season. I’m in no hurry to rush to Christmas. We’ll have 12 days to celebrate when Christmas comes and I like the sense of preparation and anticipation. We’ve already done a bit of Christmas shopping as we like to send packages to our daughter’s family from our house rather than having them shipped from online sellers. And there is no place better to shop for gifts than a bookstore. I’m willing to break my usual Black Friday no shopping tradition for a little adventure. Perhaps we’ll head to the bookstore after I finish chores this morning.

Of course we don’t need to go to the bookstore today, and tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, which would be a good day to support a local independent bookstore as well. I’m not up on all of the various shopping holidays, but Small Business Saturday makes more sense to me than Black Friday or Cyber Monday. I’m pretty sure that I’ll have no problem avoiding online purchases in recognition of Cyber Monday.

The first Sunday of Advent is the day of hope and it seems that hope is especially needed in our world today. Advent hope is deeper than wishing for a positive outcome. It is energizing and engaging in action with a vision of a better world. Unlike the message that you might receive from some congregations, the Bible does not focus on life after death. God’s realm is not presented so much as some other place where we go when we die, but as the pursuit of justice and peace in this life in this world. The stories of Jesus are stories of healing and justice being delivered to those who have been marginalized by society. Advent hope is rooted in God’s promise to never abandon humanity and in our response to that promise with our promise to be people of God.

The prophets speak of hope in the midst of oppression, empire, and circumstances that might not, on the surface, inspire hope. Our hope is not based in a desire for wealth or power or fame, but rather in a simple call to serve. Our promise does not come with a dramatic overthrow of government or a sudden suspension of the everyday, but rather in the blessing of a child born vulnerable and in need of care.

Of course there is more to hope than I will write in my journal today. I have to save some of my ideas for a sermon on Sunday. Having the gift of thinking about hope and the promise of Advent in my life is a joyful and energizing inspiration for today and for the days to come. May you discover new depths of hope as we enter this season of anticipation.