The wisdom of the mystics Christian’s call Desert Mothers and Desert Fathers is continually relevant, I’m finding. These sages lived often extreme lives, but their solitude and piety produced acute wisdom.

There is a saying that I’m taking to heart today, early on in this Advent season. It reads, “Abba Poemen said about Abba Pior that every single day he made a fresh beginning.”

Beloved, would anyone write that about you and your life? That every day you “made a fresh beginning?”

I do not think it would be said about mine…at least, not yet.

Day to day I carry too much baggage with me: the things I left undone, or the things I did that I should not have done. Worries that chase me in my dreams. Concerns that dog my footsteps.

And yet, I love the idea of making every day a fresh beginning. I’d love to try it on, you know, just to see how it feels.

Perhaps I will.

Advent is a season of waiting; this is true. But sometimes something so good can’t wait. Sometimes Advent can be a season where we put off waiting and live into a new reality, just to see.

Just to see.

Try to make a fresh beginning each morning, Beloved, and wait for that “old you” with the cares and concerns to get the picture and stop showing up in the mirror at sunrise.

For your Advent playlist today, add “Wonderful World” to the rotation…but not the Armstrong version (though, it is amazing). Instead, try on this arrangement by Kina Grannis…you know, for something fresh.