Dear People of St. David’s
St. David’s Pastoral Staff is sharing a series of four videos reflecting on each of our four Advent themes. These themes of hope, peace, joy, and love go along with the four Sundays of Advent and our church service, during which we’ll light a candle to symbolize one of them. This is also something we would love for you to join in at home.
This week’s reflection is by the Rev. Rick Morley. Below the video you’ll find a transcript. This is the third of four videos.
Click here to see our Advent event and Christmas worship schedule.
This Advent season, we look ahead to Christmas and the coming of Jesus Christ, remembering that Christ is the light in the darkness of our world. This third week we stop to light three candles and appreciate the JOY that Christ brings. The Rev. Rick Morley, St. David’s Rector, shares this week’s reflection.
TRANSCRIPT:
Four weeks of Advent precedes Christmas, just like 40 days of Lent precedes Easter. But Advent and Lent are very different. Lent is a time of repentance, introspection, and spiritual renewal. Advent is a time of waiting and expectation.
Of course, there’s different kinds of waiting. There’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s waiting for the thing that you’re dreading. There’s the anxious waiting to see if you’re gonna get good news or bad news. Advent waiting is something totally different; It’s waiting for something wonderful and terrific—the coming of Jesus into the world.
As a child, I was terrible at waiting. The last few weeks before Christmas were like torture. There was one time that our family booked a cruise to the Caribbean and waiting for that trip was so hard. I had to just put it out of mind, like I had to completely forget it was even happening. I applied early admission to college and so I heard that I had been accepted to St. Joe’s sometime in the late fall. I had to wait almost a year to actually go. It was agonizing.
Then there’s the waiting we did for the birth of our children. When we were waiting for the birth of our first child, Zoe, there was so much joy. There was the purchase of a crib and a pack and play and a Diaper Genie. But there was also the worried anticipation of what it was gonna be like to be parents. Were we ready? Were we gonna make it? Were we going to get any sleep? We were excited for what was to come, but we didn’t know what it was gonna be like when she got here.
Advent is waiting for something joyous. Jesus’ coming into the world is a joyous thing. Of course, you probably know this. Advent is not just waiting for Jesus to come at Christmas; it’s also waiting for Jesus to come again. Waiting for the light of Christ to break into our hurting world is a joyful expectation.
Joy though is tricky. It’s not just being happy. In “The Book of Joy,” co-written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, they identify joy as being something that is not situationally specific. There might be hard and trying things that we go through where happiness is something that we just can’t manage. But joy is something that is deep enough, something that arises out of the center of where we are that can be felt and enacted even when times are tough. In this sense, joy is the embodiment of trust and faith that all shall be well; that in the end, all will be made right. And right now, no matter what we’re facing right now, we are held in God’s hands, and they are good hands to be in.
That is the kind of joyful waiting that Advent promises us because Jesus is coming.
Blessings,
The Rev. Rick Morley, Rector
Published on December 11, 2025.