Through the (Peanut Butter-Smudged) Looking Glass

Not your typical Advent reflection

And this is the hope of Advent:

That the perfect is coming, and when it does, we won’t have to make do with slivers of light coming through peanut butter-smudged windows.

Deidre Braley

Speaking of Advent…

Simple Christmas: An Advent Guide starts this Friday (December 1). If you want to be more intentional about resting and drawing near to God in this dazzling season, read wintery poetry and Christmastime reflections, and learn how to make a homemade wreath and a boss charcuterie board, look no further. It’s $5, which is less than a gingerbread oatmilk latte from Starbucks (ask me how I know 🫠).

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In the morning the sun shines through our living room windows, illuminating months’ worth of smudgy fingerprints.

The kids are always standing on the back of the couch, hauling the windows down to shout salutations at the oil man or get a better look at the outdoor Christmas lights. Inexplicably, they always seem to have yogurt or peanut butter on their hands when they do this.

It’s getting to the point now where only a fraction of the light actually makes it into our home. [If you were wondering what to get me for Christmas, a cleaning lady’s not a bad idea.] This morning, as I drank my coffee and thought, I’ve really got to do something about that, I was reminded of an odd and beautiful tidbit of the Bible that—though I’ve never heard it read at Christmastime—actually feels perfect for Advent, this season of anticipation.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he finishes his oft-quoted homily on love by writing, “…when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away… For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13: 10, 12).

In other words: we ain’t seen nothing yet.