In the Church, we enter a season of hopeful anticipation leading up to the celebration of Jesus’s birth called Advent, and yet, Jesus is already born. 

Advent is truly meant to call us into another kind of hopeful anticipation, as we await Christ’s return and the coming of Heaven on Earth. The gospel stories of Jesus’s birth and the apocalyptic images of the book of Revelation all depict different images of the same God. Different images of the same Heaven. 

When we look through a kaleidoscope, we see a pattern of reflected light that creates an image. As we turn the kaleidoscope, we see the image change again and again. Same light, same mirrors, but different images. As we enter a season of hopeful anticipation, we will turn these biblical stories and images over again and again, so that we might see God and Heaven more fully as we anticipate the coming of Christ. This is the kaleidoscope effect.