This coming Sunday, November 30, marks the first Sunday of Advent. For those of you not familiar with the liturgical year, Advent is actually the beginning of the church year, and is the season before Christmas. Advent is a "penitential" season, like Lent (which is why the liturgical color is purple) and should be a time of personal reflection.

Advent is supposed to be about waiting. For strict liturgists, Christmas music is avoided for the four Sundays of Advent. Of course, our culture can hardly seem to wait until Christmas! Here we are, a little less than a month away, and millions spent today fighting the crowds (quite literally in some cases!) in order to get to the bargains of "Black Friday."

This Sunday I will be singing "Every Valley" by John Ness Beck in my church. The text is a familiar one:

"Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it." Isaiah 40: 4-5 (KJV)

I have heard this text read and sung dozens, if not hundreds of times, most often as the first tenor aria and chorus in Handel's Messiah. (I have now sung in Messiah so often, I have literally lost count of how many performances I have had!)

As I have prepared this solo, however, I am struck by something I hadn't considered before. I think the operative word in the passage is SHALL. The promises of God are not things that MIGHT happen or COULD happen but are things that SHALL happen. The prophet speaks with absolute authority and certainty. I believe that Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. felt that certainty when he quoted this passage in his famous "I have a dream" speech in 1963.

This Advent season the world is still waiting. Waiting for "Peace on Earth". Waiting for an end to injustice and intolerance. Waiting for the promises of God to be realized. But this Advent season, I will wait with the certainty that these things SHALL happen.