The Third Sunday of Advent is called "Rose Sunday" represented today by our pink candle and the pink hues in the floral arrangements. The readings this Sunday are meant as a bit of a respite from the deep solemnity that is Advent. This Sunday is also known as "stir up" Sunday, after our Collect today: "Stir up your power O Lord and with great might come among us." Let's see what we can stir up....The name, Rose Sunday, comes from the Isaiah reading we heard today about the desert blossoming at the coming of the Lord: "the desert shall rejoice and blossom...."

The Psalmist, and Isaiah, and Paul and Matthew all share this vision of something new breaking in during this season we call Advent - a season of the odd-pairings of reality and possibility that up to now has existed only in the world of dreamers. Advent is the season of wondering, wondering what it would it take for us to believe in, and bring into being, a world where such unlikely pairings would exist not just in dreams and visions, but real in our lifetime?

I was listening to NPR last Saturday and they were airing a program focused on World AIDS Day. There were lots of statistics and numbers being bandied about. One set of statistics that struck me is that, world-wide, 6000 people a day, every day, will die from AIDS and that 7000 people a day, every day, will become infected with the AIDS virus. Many times for me, those kinds of numbers and statistics are meaningless. I try to make sense of them, I try to put faces to numbers, but by lumping 13,000 people together like that, it becomes hard for me to imagine, let alone understand.

Even after all the theological training, sermons preached and prayers prayed, I continue to come to our Advent texts daunted, challenged, even a little disappointed that I'm so ready to embrace the baby-Jesus and yet, can't hold him until I wrestle with these ‘end of time' texts!....As the days grow shorter and light fades into winter, the season of Advent begins a new church year by inviting us to peer into the darkness of what cannot yet be seen, but already has been imagined by Isaiah and Jesus and Paul.