Singer-songwriter Steve Bell will be on stage later this week in Steinbach and Winnipeg, sharing stories and songs from Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.
Listen to the AM1250 morning show this week for a chance to win tickets to his concerts as well as CDs.
Bell joined the AM1250 Morning Show last week to reflect on the season of Christmas, the importance of celebrating and recognizing it through music, while stressing the foundation must come from understanding the depth of the season, as well.
"Right now, in the secular world and even in the Christian world, almost sadly, our music is getting very tinsel-y, it's starting to jingle, we're starting to get all excited, and there's a lot of sugar," shared Bell. "It's such a profound season. Advent, traditionally, was a season of fasting, not of feasting. Christmas is for feasting, 12 days, and traditionally you're supposed to go for it. Eat, drink, party and celebrate, and we should."
Bell pointed to how, right now, we're waiting for Christ to come to us.
"There's sort of three comings of Christ," explained Bell. "So, the classic formulation is He came with love to Bethlehem, He comes now with grace, and He will come again with justice at the end of the age. The idea we are waiting once again, it is to be impregnated by God with divine life, and to realize that this is actually what we were created for. We were created to receive divine life, but not just for ourselves, but for the sake of the world. We nurture it, we let it grow, then we bear it forth. There could be pain in that, but there's a beauty in that."
Bell noted those attending his Advent concerts this week can expect to see him "tone down the tinsel".
"I'm trying to bring up the prayerful quiet using music and melody to sort of enhance our ability to just ponder like Mary pondered these things in her heart," he said. "There's a sense of contemplatively making space to do this well. I mean, of course, we're going to do some fun stuff, and you don't want to be a killjoy, but to really help people just quiet down a little bit, and exercise the wonder muscle, you know, the pondering muscle, like, what is this mystery that I'm a part of, this unbelievable story."
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