Embracing the Wait: How One Family’s Table Talk Redefines the Purpose of Advent
The purpose of the Advent season has long been understood as a time to prepare hearts for the coming of Christ, reflecting on His historical birth while waiting in hopeful expectation for His eventual return. For Robert Bortins, CEO of Classical Conversations, this period of waiting offers profound lessons regarding faith, parental presence, and the unexpected theological questions children bring home from church. According to Bortins, the holy nature of waiting is something modern families must intentionally make room for amid the rushed schedules of contemporary life.
A Question After Communion
The reflection on modern family dynamics and sacred waiting often begins in ordinary moments. Following communion during a Sunday service, Bortins’s church traditionally recites together the proclamation: “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ is coming again.” Not long after hearing these familiar words, Bortins’s young son turned to him with a blunt and searching inquiry: “We’ve been saying this for nine years. When is He coming?”
Faced with a question that resists tidy answers, Bortins realized his son was voicing the central inquiry of Advent itself. It is also, he suggests, one of the fundamental questions of family life: how do parents and children navigate the reality when the anticipated arrival does not align with human timetables?
The Ancient Meaning and Purpose of Advent
Derived from the Latin adventus, meaning arrival, Advent signifies a "coming." Encompassing the four weeks leading up to Christmas, the season invites Christians to prepare for the celebration of Christ’s first coming while simultaneously looking ahead to His promised second coming.
This liturgical season requires believers to inhabit the same tension experienced by Old Testament saints who awaited the Messiah for centuries. Although the divine promise remains certain, its fulfillment often tarries. Drawing on the theological insight of Augustine—who observed that human hearts remain restless until they find rest in God—Advent serves as a spiritual training ground that transforms restlessness into enduring hope. It reminds believers that God operates outside human schedules and continues working purposefully through every hour of waiting.
Why Faith Questions Surface at the Family Table
What resonated most with Bortins about his son’s inquiry was the setting in which it occurred. The question was not raised in a formal classroom environment with a bell signaling the end of the lesson. Instead, it was posed at home, around the family table, immediately following church in the ordinary flow of a Sunday afternoon. It was directed to a father in a spontaneous moment, hanging in the air long enough for both to contemplate its weight.
This organic timing mirrors the foundational instructional model outlined in Deuteronomy 6. Ancient directives did not instruct families to enroll children in weekly seminars on commandments; rather, parents were encouraged to discuss matters of faith naturally when sitting at home, walking along the way, lying down, and rising. The historical transmission of faith was always designed to occur within the unhurried, unscheduled, and repeated rhythms of daily household life. Unsurprisingly, this environment is precisely where the most profound and challenging questions tend to emerge.
The Conviction Behind the Household Economy
This conviction forms the core of Bortins’s book, SILK: More Kids, More Wealth, which examines the acronym SILK representing "Single Income, Lots of Kids." While the work addresses significant economic principles, its primary argument centers on where human character is genuinely shaped and who answers a child’s most important questions.
Children who voice wonder regarding the return of Christ, the presence of suffering, or the distinct choices required of their family unit need a parent within immediate earshot. Furthermore, those parents must possess the time, availability, and theological seriousness required to sit with complex inquiries rather than delegating the responsibility to external institutions, regardless of their academic excellence. Cultivating this atmosphere requires a deliberate ordering of household life to ensure parental presence remains possible.
Aristotle’s Household and the Nature of Advent
In classical philosophy, Aristotle referred to the household, or oikos, as the primary and most fundamental human community, serving as the initial sphere where life is ordered toward the good before broader societal structures take shape. Bortins notes that Advent is inherently a household season, observed around tables and Advent wreaths through the gradual lighting of candles that mark an unhurried wait.
For educators and parents, this patient waiting is a familiar reality. Seeds planted in the autumn months often yield no visible harvest until spring, years later, or sometimes not at all within this lifetime. Epiphanies and moments of deep understanding rarely arrive on demand; instead, they manifest in due time, echoing the timing of the first Advent.
A household structured around a single income and the steady presence of a parent provides the structural foundation necessary for genuine spiritual and intellectual formation. When both parents are consumed by full-time employment and external institutional timetables, the necessary margin to engage a child’s deep theological questions vanishes, resulting in deferred conversations or rushed responses.
Plato articulated a similar observation in the Laws, arguing that the earliest and most decisive years of a child’s development occur at home under the consistent attention of parents. These caregivers shape habits and affections long before formal instruction begins, making the attentive parent the architect of essential educational work.
Rootedness and the Formation of Character
Reflecting broader cultural themes, Bortins connects the virtue of patience found in Advent with literary archetypes of steadfastness, such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s depiction of the Shire. In times of severe trial, the rooted, unhurried hobbits proved resilient because they had been shaped daily within a culture that valued enduring principles.
Conversely, C.S. Lewis warned in The Abolition of Man against cultural shifts that abandon objective values, producing what he termed "men without chests"—individuals possessing intellect and appetite but lacking a moral center or the capacity for sacrificial commitments. Building moral resilience, much like answering a difficult theological question, occurs slowly and honestly around the family table through the steady presence of a parent willing to remain engaged.
Reclaiming Time for Formation
Addressing his son’s question about the return of Jesus, Bortins emphasized that Christians have anticipated this event for nearly two millennia, a shared wait that connects generations of believers and embodies the promise of renewed strength found in biblical scripture. This patient endurance represents the central invitation of a home-centered life, echoing historical warnings by theologians like J. Gresham Machen regarding the intense institutional competition for children’s attention and hours.
Ultimately, Bortins suggests that while parenting is rarely executed without imperfection, the ultimate goal transcends tidy answers. The enduring value lies in parental presence—remaining in the room when difficult questions are raised and teaching children the virtue of waiting well as an essential expression of faith.
