Mike and I recently sat in a crowded auditorium, preparing to enjoy one of our greatest shared pleasures: a live orchestra concert with a favorite piece of music (Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons) on the program. This musical work has delighted us both for as long as we can remember. When we first met almost 30 years ago, and learned of our common love for Vivaldi, we knew our relationship was worth pursuing.

As we sat waiting for the program to begin, the musicians assembled themselves onstage and began that familiar, almost comical, ritual of tuning up. The word "cacophony" was coined for just this experience. Strings screeched and waves of random sound wandered about until pure notes were discovered and all were in tune with one another. Then...silence; a long and delicious silence while we waited with hundreds of people for the first notes to sound.

This silence prepares us for the music to follow. It is a time of attentive, expectant, waiting for the first notes of the performance to break into us. Because I was waiting for music I had experienced and savored many times in the past, waiting was a two-fold gift:

First, I knew something of what I waited for. It was already a part of my history. I could, in an instant, reach back in time to touch moments from days gone by ...when I heard The Four Seasons in times of great pain and in times of joy...in stately concert halls and in outdoor parks...with baby Dan asleep on my lap...with a pile of papers to sort and read as Vivaldi played through the tape deck...or on the car radio along unfamiliar roads. In waiting, all of those moments come back in a great rush and time folds in upon itself.

AND waiting, I knew that this time I would hear something I had never heard before. As much as I know this piece of music, as often as it has touched my soul, each time of waiting to hear it once again opens into a new revelation. I simply missed some part of this exquisite piece which now bursts out as if for the first time. So familiar is this piece that I can hear it in memory’s ear; nonetheless, I wait expecting to hear something I have never heard before. And I always do.

Advent is just this kind of waiting, isn’t it? We wait for what we have known. For Christ has already come among us, Christ has already come to each of us. We await the Messiah who has already broken into our souls in good times and bad, in stately liturgy and in restless new life, in the midst of toil and in journeys we never planned to take. Yet, each Advent invites us to experience Christ in a way we never have before. The One who has graced our days is also to be discovered anew as we wait in Advent’s expectant silence.

For however many moments we’ve lived in which Jesus the Christ has spoken to us, guided us, companioned us, healed us, saved us; there is still more which Christ will reveal to us. In our lifelong journey as people of Baptism - people who have been and are being redeemed - we wait for the One whom we have known, who is also the One who will show us more if we but wait attentively, openly, silently. Seek Christ. Listen for Christ in silence, expecting to hear what you have never heard before.

In this Advent and Christmastide, may each of us discover something new about Jesus Christ. For Christ commands our utmost attention. May we find new ways to serve this One who is both joyfully familiar and startlingly new. May the music of Christ’s redemptive mercy immerse us in the glory of our salvation...and may Christ - who has been known to us - become also a new reality to us. In every season, may Christ be known and adored in everything we do.