Advent is one of my favorite seasons of the church year because of the yearning feeling it offers. Advent feels incomplete. It has no fullness or completeness to it, but it looks forward to something that is coming.
I think the most predominant feeling I had as a teenager and young adult was a feeling of yearning. I felt like I was trapped in my constrained circumstances, but if I could just break free of them I could experience great and wonderful things. I yearned to experience the freedom I heard other people talking about.
This yearning was a powerful motivator for me. I traveled and did a lot of things I wouldn't have otherwise. Yearning for something that's not yet here motivates us to seek new things. Yearning is a lean, hungry feeling, a sense of not-yet-but-very-close, a desire for something more.
That's the feel of Advent for me. We're waiting for the birth of Christ, and we yearn for it. We're waiting for the second coming of Christ, and we yearn for it. We want more of God and we yearn for God.
Many of the Advent hymns say, "Come," as a way of expressing this yearning: "Savior of the nations, come!"; "O come, O come, Emmanuel"; "Lo, he comes"; "Come, thou long-expected Jesus."
Yearning for God means to wait with hope and longing. That's the feel of Advent for me.
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