When I was a kid, every Christmas we put up decorations while listening to a holiday compilation on cassette tape. One of the songs I vividly remember crying to was Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" (1967). Every Christmas from then on, that song has made its way into my life somehow.

This year, Stevie Wonder and Andra Day did an Apple Music commercial featuring this song. It'll give you all the feels, but still watch it below. I want to share some thoughts over the next few weeks using lines from the song.

“Someday at Christmas men won’t be boys / playing with bombs like kids play with toys / One warm December our hearts will see / a world where men are free”

In the Christian tradition, Advent is the time we anticipate Jesus coming as a child, but also look forward in hope, love, joy, and peace for Christ's second coming. Every year Advent means a lot to me personally, having dealt with waiting more than I would care to. Whether it's waiting for my pizza to arrive, waiting for my car to be serviced, waiting for teenagers to settle down . . .

or waiting 10 months for my immigration visa to be approved or denied, waiting to hear from God, waiting for a chance to see my friends and family back home again, 2015 has been a year of waiting for me. Many people find themselves in this limbo, purgatory—this waiting (often for change).

From refugees (particularly children), to disenfranchised people of colour, to victims of gun violence and terrorism, to an island capital of 200,000 people that experienced over 100 violent murders to date, people around the world experience pain and wait . . . in hope . . . that someday things will be different.

Christmas is not about the gifts we volunteered as tribute for in the Black Friday Games. Gifts are great, but the greatest gift we receive is Jesus and the hope he brings. While waiting in this hope, we don't just sit around for change, but we work for change. We work by dispensing this hope to others, who just like us, desperately need it. We work to set the earth as God intends it to be. And as we do that, we get a glimpse of that reconciled day at Christmas time.

Someday at Christmas (Part I)