Winter can sometimes become tiring.  So whenever summer leaves her hints in the air and the blossoms around our home something primordial awakes within me. 

This weekend our community studied the apocalyptic text of Mark 13.  In it Jesus uses a fig tree to teach his disciples that “summer is coming”.  The hints of the universe’s summer is here through acts of selfless love and forgiveness, through creative communication and millions of small acts of grace.  

In Johannesburg, Spring starts on the 1st of September.  Through most of my adult life, these Spring days have usually been cold!  Invariably it would rain or be a day of chilly winds.  Yet Spring is the season that shows that ‘summer is coming’.

We currently live in the age of ‘summer is coming’.

But there are also still cold fronts like cholera in Zimbabwe, madmen in India and bitterness in my heart.  Advent is the season in which we remind ourselves that ‘summer is coming’!