So week 7 started today... WEEK 7... just two weeks and term is finished and Advent is here!
Ooooh... Advent... Christmas...
Now I know Christmas seems to get earlier and earlier every year in the shops, but it also arrives very quickly when you study at a University that has very short terms. I have this term joined a choir (yipee, at last I am no longer just singing in the bath), and what do you have to do at the end of Michaelmas term? Well sing carols at a concert or in the streets of Cambridge (or both). And because I have starting singing Christmas carols, I thought that gave me a good enough reason for starting to practice Christmas carols on the trumpet as well. Ok, most probably won't be playing in public this year, but you never know, so it is worth being prepared!
This of course means if I start looking at Christmas carols, I also have to look at Advent carols (usually same chapter in the hymnbook anyway). After all Advent does come before Christmas: a point that sometimes gets forgotten. And as I have to lead worship over Advent, no bad thing getting the tunes into my head now. I do, however, have a favourite Advent carol: 'O come, o come Emmanuel'. Someone in my preaching class the other day did suggest a set of themes to cover the season of Advent which would allow the use of 'O come, o come Emmanuel' on every Advent Sunday! My first pastorate, beware, we will be doing this and I will be playing the trumpet! (Why not, I'll be the minister... I can do what I want... can't I?)
So Advent, that waiting place, that time to prepare and to look forward. A time we sometimes miss because we're too busy with Christmas. Well, this year, things are going to be different. I may be singing Christmas carols in November and going to Christmas dinners in early December, but this year I'm not going to forget Advent and the place of limbo it puts us in and the longing for Christ's coming (again).
Therefore, theme tune for 1st to 24th December: "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"
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