Advent Reflection #4

Advent is a season shaped by waiting—holy waiting, hopeful waiting, sometimes weary waiting. It’s the quiet inhale before the joy of Christmas morning, the slow kindling of light in a world that can feel so dim. I know I’ve written a lot about waiting, but it is truly the piece of Advent I often miss the most. Every year, Advent asks me to pause long enough to notice the subtle ways God shows up.

This year, my reminder came months before Advent ever began.

On Good Friday—one of the most solemn days of the year—I received a gift I never expected: a phonograph. A beautiful, vintage one. The kind that slows life down the moment the needle touches the record. It wasn’t something I’d asked for. It wasn’t something I even knew I needed. But the moment I heard that first warm crackle, something in my heart shifted. It wasn’t just the joy of the machine itself—it was the quiet tenderness of knowing a friend made it happen simply so I could enjoy it.

There’s a tenderness to listening to music on a phonograph. You can’t skip ahead, can’t rush the moment, can’t multitask your way through the melody. You sit. You wait. You listen. You receive.

And in that slowness, something inside me learned to appreciate again—appreciate beauty, pause, presence, and gifts I hadn’t earned or expected.

As Advent began this year, I found myself thinking about that Good Friday gift—how something that arrived unannounced, unrequested, somehow became the thing my heart didn’t know how much it longed for. Isn’t that the way God often moves? While we are busy, weary, distracted—He is already preparing grace we haven’t imagined, comfort we didn’t see coming, hope we weren’t sure we deserved.

The people of Israel waited for centuries for a Messiah. They waited through silence, exile, confusion, and disappointment. And when the gift finally came, it wasn’t what anyone expected. A baby. In a manger. In the quiet. In the slow and small and unseen.

A gift that cracked open the world in the gentlest way.

That phonograph has become a kind of parable for me—a reminder that unexpected gifts often carry the deepest meaning. That God’s timing rarely looks like ours, but His goodness always finds us. That slowness isn’t a setback—sometimes it’s the space where appreciation is born.

And there’s something else: the phonograph came through a friend who simply discovered I liked it and, with the help of his own friends, made something happen. That alone feels like a whisper from God in this season. So often we try to make things happen ourselves—we push, we force, we desire, we grasp. And in all of that striving, we forget to let others in. But that isn’t what the Christmas story shows us.

The shepherds needed the angels to proclaim the news.

Mary and Joseph needed the innkeeper’s kindness to find a place to stay.

Jesus needed Mary to carry Him and fight for Him.

Everyone needed someone else.

It was never a one-person story.

Christmas reminds us that we are meant to need each other. We are meant to receive from one another. We are meant to experience God’s love not just in isolation, but through community—through people who help us find the peace and joy we long for so much.

This Advent, I’m trying to listen the way I listen to my 78s: with stillness, with attention, without rushing the moment. I’m trying to trust that God is already stitching together gifts I cannot yet see. I’m trying to believe—really believe—that the unexpected can still be holy.

Maybe this is the invitation of Advent:

To wait with openness.

To let God surprise us.

To receive what we didn’t think to ask for.

To rediscover appreciation in the quiet places.

And maybe, just maybe, to believe that somewhere in the waiting, a gift is already on its way—one that will make our hearts crackle with warmth again, like a needle finding the groove of a new song.