The Advent season is upon us. In my family, we celebrate advent with a regular lighting of candles, carols, and family devotions. Like all family worship with young kids, sometimes it is a really sweet moment that our family separates the sacred from the profane. Other times, it is chaotic and dissolves quickly. And in those times, we hope that the discipline of showing up to the throne room counts for more than the right spirit. One tradition we have is that each week as we light a new candle in the advent wreath, we add another verse to the hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel. By the end of advent, we are singing all four verses. Sometimes with hymns, we can sing the words and not be conscious of the full meaning. O Come, O Come Emmanuel is never that way for me. Each time we sing it I am struck by the deep and mysterious theology reflected in each line. And I am reminded every year that the story of Jesus’s birth, life, and death is a life-giving theology with transformative power.