The Longest Night

'Going through the motions' is not a bad thing - sometimes it's exactly what we need. Join our Advent 4 Watch and Wait Vigil this Sunday, 12/21.

It’s always the hardest week of the year for me.

Despite the joy and anticipation, despite knowing how much I am loved and how much I love so many others…

The darkness seeps into my bones as the sun goes away. It feels heavy, and I think the light will never come.

I know it happens, every year. I know the corner will turn, and my usual optimism and excitement for life will return.

But strangely, it doesn’t make it any easier. These last few days are the hardest.

This Sunday is the longest night - December 21st will be the day with the least sunlight in 2025.

I dread it every year.

And I know that the one thing I can do is prepare the way.

That’s what we’ve been doing all Advent.

When we don’t feel it - even when we have trouble believing it - we can go through the motions of worship.

We can light our candles in the dark.

Sometimes the idea of ‘rote’ worship is seen as a bad thing - false, meaningless.

But I was at a funeral this week, and reminded that it’s also what we do when we don’t know what to do. When our hearts are not in it - when they’re broken or hurting - the words and postures of our faith ground us from a place beyond words, beyond understanding.

They orient and direct us towards what we know is true -

God’s love is redeeming us all. The light will always overcome the darkness.

And so we gather, pray, sing, reflect - and wait with hope through this and any dark night.

Click this button to join the Advent Watch and Wait Vigil on Sunday, December 21st at 9pm - or right now!

You will get a reminder email with the live stream link in it on Sunday night - but you can also join here!

Go ahead and click it now - it will take you to the exact online location of the live video on Sunday night at 9pm Eastern. You’ll just see the preview screen until it’s time to actually join.

But you can practice! (At Trexo, we’re all about practice) to be sure it works.

Click it now to be sure. Then save this email and click this button at 9pm on Sunday night:

The live stream Vigil practice is for ‘gym members’ - it’s part of the overall Trexo practice for paid subscribers. It’s not too late to become a gym member and join us for Advent 4 Vigil - and practice with us in the coming year, too!

We’re not pretending the darkness isn’t real. We’re watching it be overcome, gradually, week by week, by the light of Christ.

And we’re doing this while living in what the ancient church called “the in-between time” - the space between “Christ has died, Christ is risen” and “Christ will come again.”

The practice of Vigil teaches us how to wait. With active, hopeful attention.

Week 4 (Dec 21 - The Longest Night): God Is With Us
Gospel: “They shall name him Emmanuel - God with us”
We watch through the darkest night because we know the light is coming.

What is the Christian practice of Vigil?

• It’s solidarity with Christ’s suffering and resurrection.
  We’re actively participating - scanning for the first sign of the dawn breaking on Easter morning, the star that announces Jesus’ birth, the moment of the resurrection of the dead.
  

• It’s witnessing a threshold between times.
  Night is liminal space: between one day and the next, between sleep and wake, between dark and light.
  Vigil is being present, physically and spiritually, in the liminal space we live in as Christians.

  • Between this world and the next.

  • Between earth and heaven.

  • Between ‘Christ is risen’ and ‘Christ will come again’.
    

• It’s an act of faith.
  Jesus asks his disciples to watch with him. Even though they failed in the Garden of Gethsemane, they tried. This is the life of discipleship.

  ’Yes, Lord, I believe’ (John 11:27) we say.
  Also, ‘Help me in my unbelief’ (Mark 9:24).
  
  Vigil is intention.
  
  A sign that as imperfectly as we follow, we desire closeness with God.

The world gets as dark as it ever does this Sunday. But it will never diminish the light of Christ. Come wait with us.