Advent is the time when God breaks in on us with new surprises and touches us with a renewing and restoring power. . . . We should use the Advent season as a period to identify the matters from which we need to be redeemed. Identify whatever it is that seems to be holding you in its power. . . . Commit it to the one who comes to set the prisoners free, turn it over to Christ in prayer, and ask the one who has come into your life to take this problem up into himself.
-Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 38, 51.