We often imagine Advent as a peaceful countdown to Christmas. But if we are honest, Advent today feels more like spiritual triage. We carry too much—news of wars, rising violence, immigration crises, Christian Nationalism, political extremism, loneliness in our neighborhoods, and the relentless ache of a planet in distress. Add to that our own lists: buying gifts or not, navigating family conflict, managing expectations, and trying to carve out even a sliver of silence, being still and know that I am God.
Every Advent, we talk about the desert. But the desert doesn’t always look like sand and stones. Sometimes the desert is your inbox. Sometimes it’s the news cycle. Sometimes it’s the fear you carry for your children, or the deep loneliness hidden behind your holiday cheer, or the exhaustion of trying to hold together a world that is unraveling at the edges.
And yet, the four ancient rules of desert travel feel strangely contemporary—spiritual wisdom for an age of overwhelm.
Rule One: Take Only What You Can Carry
Not your anxiety about the world.
Not the weight of everyone’s expectations.
Not the unspoken pressure to make Christmas magical.
God does not ask us to haul the world on our shoulders. God asks us to show up as ourselves—unarmored, unclenched, open.
Rule Two: Never Go Alone
You cannot survive the modern wilderness—pandemics, politics, grief, polarization—by yourself.
Jesus did not send the disciples out solo because faith is optional or private. He sent them two by two because human beings do not survive isolation.
Advent is permission to lean on one another, to receive help, to tell the truth, to not pretend we are fine when we are not.
Rule Three: Expect to Be Anxious
This season often feels like a collision between beauty and chaos.
Do not mistake your anxiety as failure. It may be the very place where God is trying to get your attention—an inner wilderness that makes space for something new to be born.
Rule Four: Wait Upon the Lord
Waiting is hard when everything around us is optimized for speed, reaction, outrage, and efficiency.
But God’s work is slow, subtle, hidden in plain sight. Advent invites us to trust that what we cannot rush, we also cannot stop.
So we travel light. We travel together. We welcome anxiety as a teacher. And we wait—expectantly—because even now, God is drawing near.
And into this swirl of life-as-desert, Isaiah dares to speak:
“A highway shall be there… no traveler shall go astray.”
In other words: even when the world feels like a closed road, God is still making a way.
John the Baptist expected God’s arrival to sweep away empires and topple the powerful. Instead, Jesus came healing one person at a time—quietly, tenderly, subversively. We know that to be true today. God is found less in spectacle and more in the neighbor before us, the stranger we overlook, the immigrant we protect, the person who needs our compassion, our time, our presence.
Advent invites a simple but searching question:
Are we prepared to recognize Christ when he appears in such small, ordinary ways?
To prepare him room today might mean:
- pausing long enough to notice the human being in front of us;
- letting go of the myth that we must fix everything ourselves;
- choosing curiosity over certainty;
- refusing to dehumanize even those with whom we fervently disagree;
- practicing mercy in a culture addicted to outrage;
- telling the truth about our fear instead of pretending to be strong.
This is not sentimental preparation. It is courageous preparation—the work of people who know the world is broken but refuse to give up on the way of love or one another.
Isaiah ends with a fitting invitation for our time:
“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
Not run. Not fix. Not conquer.
Walk. Together. In the dim light we have, toward the bright light we long for.
This is Advent in the modern wilderness:
Less perfection, more presence.
Less spectacle, more solidarity.
Less certainty, more hope.
Prepare him room.
Blessings, Rex
