“All those bits of our contemporary culture which are about rushing to get gratification, getting the results straight away, all those habits of our culture which so drive the crises of our culture, whether it is the credit crunch or the environmental crisis, all those things we have to cast a rather cold eye over during Advent and say slow down, take time, let yourself grow and open up.”
Dr Williams challenged believers in the video to see what change Jesus could really bring by letting Him into their lives “that bit more fully, that bit more radically”.
“During Advent we try to get ourselves a bit more used to the truth, the truth about ourselves, which is not always very encouraging, [and] the truth about God above all, which is always very encouraging,” he said.
“The one who comes will come with a great challenge to us. It will be like fire on the earth, as the Bible says. And yet the one who comes is coming in love, is coming to set us free, and that is something well worth waiting for.”
The launch was also joined by Dr Paula Gooder, Canon Theologian at Birmingham Cathedral and author of ‘The Meaning is in the Waiting’.
She said that waiting need not be passive and boring.
“One of the things I discovered a few years ago was that waiting can be a really active thing, not only a passive thing. Waiting is about being immensely active, but internally rather than externally. Proper waiting allows you to begin to prepare properly for Christmas and to understand its importance,” she said.
She added that recognising the need to wait was as important a message for Christians as it was for people outside of the church.
“It’s a message for everybody. Both within and outside of the church we have lost that sense of why waiting is important and what waiting can give us. We can tap into that lost art of waiting and begin to understand that waiting is transformative and not something that’s just passing the time between one point and another point.”
On the web: www.WhyWeAreWaiting.com
