Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It marks the beginning of a season of waiting, a dark season of longing for the lights and warmth of Christmas. We find waiting very difficult. Waiting confronts the illusion that we are control. It’s very easy to believe this in our modern world, where technology provides us with any information we can dream of instantly, where our infrastructure and modern medicine insulates us from our precariousness and fragility. Waiting reminds us of our powerlessness in our lives in so many ways. We recognise our inability to predict the future, to know the outcome of situations we long to see resolved. To realise we are not in control of our lives can feel hugely shocking and destabilising. And yet at Advent, we reflect on the fact that the one we are waiting for is the one who we can ask to be in control of our lives. This one does not come with power and fire. He will come, as Rowan Williams writes in his marvellous poem ‘Advent Calendar’, ‘like crying in the night, like blood, like breaking, as the earth writhes to toss him free. He will come like a child.’ I pray that this Advent, you may release all that you are waiting for into the arms of the babe in the manger. In His presence, may our waiting finally cease.