Night Watch - the Full Advent Series
my (free) gift to all of you! (audio + written versions)
Hello, all! I’m so happy to share my Advent offering with you. I hope it provides some space to hold the inevitable complexity of the season, even as many of us carry grief and doubt. May this be our season of honoring both the dark and the light. I’ve included the text (and audio) for day 1. The remainder of the series is linked below. (As a reminder, this first “aired” last Christmas. If the timeline feels off, that’s why.)
Click here if you prefer to listen to Day 1.1
Day 1 - For the Awake in the Night
“Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.” Luke 1:78-79
It’s 3:57 a.m. when I finally stop jotting groggy mental notes. I roll over, fumble for my readers, and start typing. I am awake in the middle of the night, thinking about what it means to be awake in the middle of the night. The irony is not lost on me.
We’re somewhere in the thick of Advent. I think it’s the second week, but I honestly don’t know. Church usually keeps me in the loop, but this is my first Advent without a church home. The timing feels cruel, a personal midnight after a long stretch of sunrises.
What I know: Christmas day is only a couple of weeks away.
What I’ve learned: Advent is the time leading up to Christmas day. The long wait.
Popular culture has effectively twisted Advent into a fun, commercial ritual that stretches one day of consumer-driven celebration into twenty-five. Keep fancy snacks on hand! Invite friends over every week! Finish the shopping (and wrapping) early, and then buy more, just in case! I always take the bait. But none of that is Advent. And none of that is what my beaten-down heart is craving.
Advent is an upending. A reversal. A reckoning. A longing. A loneliness. It is the bridge between our now and our one day, where kingdom things constantly shift into focus if we are paying attention.
Christmas is the shiny gift waiting for us. Advent is the weary night watch that gets us there.
Bobby and Lisa2 have worked the night shift as factory supervisors for as long as we’ve known them. A few years ago, after upgrading to a home with a swimming pool, they told us about coming home from work and jumping in while the world dreamed. “I float on my back and look up at the night sky,” Lisa said. “It’s so peaceful. It’s the best time to pray.”
Held within the contours of the nativity story, the Night is a central role. It serves as the backdrop to most of the action, a brilliant literary device for the coming Light. While I adore the poetry of scripture, this is more than a metaphor.
Night simply is.
Advent unfolds beneath the weight of a starlit sky. The flame of an oil lamp flickering in the temple. The dust kicking up from sandals and hooves as caravans move as one. The hot breath of livestock. The groans of a teenager. The first cries of a newborn. There was danger, desperation, and duplicity. There was a new kind of peace.
In the spilled-ink Advent sky, our hope is written. Thick with dreams and heavy with signs, the expansive nearness of nighttime somehow shrinks the atmosphere, erasing the fault-line between what is sacred and what is ordinary. Our primal instincts perk their ears in the dark. In the howl of night, we know to stay alert. Folded into the endless shadows of being alive, we cannot ignore our suffering. We grow more honest about our need. We muster the faith to believe there is meaning even in this.
On one of the longest nights of my life, the kind that lasts for years, I didn’t just know God was with me, I felt it. I stared up at the ceiling sometime after midnight, unsure of how I could endure. There was no light, no tunnel. Just a murky expanse of devastating outcomes.
Inaudible words stirred in the darkness.
I stopped shuffling around in the sheets. I recognized the voice that doesn’t rely on decibels. There were no clean answers that night. But I was told I did not have to be afraid and I believed it, like Zechariah, like Mary, and Joseph, the shepherds and the magicians. It changed something inside me.
I am awake right now, 4:30 a.m., along with my neighbors whose internal clocks are wound on addiction, anxiety, or graveyard shifts. I am awake with the caretakers and the moms. Somewhere, an alarm ticks closer to a crossing guard pulling on his reflective vest. Piercing the stillness, a train engineer pulls his horn, praying we listen. My neighbor wakes up for her morning shift at McDonald’s. A young dad shakes his babies awake and scuttles them half-asleep out the door to the sitter, where they will hopefully reclaim one more hour of sleep before school.
I am awake as Paid-in-America munitions fall across Palestine in the harsh daylight of their haunting midnight. I am awake with those at our border, fleeing one catastrophe and discovering another. I am awake with my friend Ron, who walks the night streets of Goshen because it is the only thing that calms him.
Advent is a journey through the night. It begs the question, What do we gain when we consider the depths of darkness in and around us?
The answers await us in the galaxies of hope surrounding us. They are everywhere. Endless. But tonight, I’ll start with this:
When we awaken to the night, we learn we’re not alone and we don’t have to be afraid. We hold on until daylight breaks, our hands clasped permanently around the smooth contours of its truth. The sun splits the skies, the Word of God cries straight into our neighborhoods.
Emmanuel arrives, and never leaves.
This means everything can be made new, even us.
Full Night Watch Series
(download the PDF file)
Audio Files
Day 2: For the Barren and the Past-Their-Prime
Day 3: For the Stayers
Day 4: For the Wanderers
Day 5: For the Unnamed and Unnoticed
Day 6: For the Disrespected and the Skeptical
Day 7: For the Faithful
Day 8: For the Prophets
Day 9: For the Revolutionaries
Day 10: For the Woo-Woo Mystics (an Epiphany reflection, because the story doesn’t end on Christmas day)
I have no assistant or audio editing capabilities, so you will hear occasional goofs. Keeping it real this Advent! I’m also adding this related note here because I forgot to add it to the PDF file (see previous sentence, haha): all books links in Night Watch are Bookshop affiliate links.
Some names are changed throughout Night Watch. These aren’t two of them. ;)
I can't express how much this means to me, Shannan. Keep fumbling in the deep hours of the night for your pen. Currently coming out of a very dark season and it's so good to be reminded that the night sky really is laden with a billion stars. And eternity remains in my heart. Trust is possible. Thank you.
Came back here to say how much I enjoyed this series again. I’m going to make it an annual thing because I get something different every time. 🥰