The Terror of Advent

If you read the Old Testament lection for this Sunday, you might find yourself scared to death.

Advent should scare the breath out of us!

It should scare us witless. It should turn our legs to pudding, our knees a-shaking and our blood to ice water.

Yes. Although we may associate Advent with emotions of anticipatory cheer, happy holiday carols and the sounds of children laughing, we get a very different view from the curmudgeonly prophet Malachi, whose thunderings we read in the eponymous book in the Old Testament -- the last book.

Our text from Malachi, one of the traditional readings for this time of year, suggests that the initial emotion that's most apropos to Advent is ... terror.

Can you think of a time that Advent terrorized you?

If not, you might remember when Advent terrorized your children -- like when you made them sit on Santa's lap at the mall, and they cried and screamed bloody murder.

You may have been terrorized by price tags.

You may feel terrorized by anti-Christian sentiment that often surfaces in the media at this time of the year.

You may feel terrorized by the...