Around the end of November, just after Thanksgiving, we celebrate the beginning of the season of Advent: the advent, the coming of God into the world in a most unlikely form and in a most unlikely place. For we celebrate God coming as a baby, in a manger, in a stable, in the little town of Bethlehem. Today's scripture from 2 Samuel 6 is also about a kind of advent, which may serve to remind us that God's advent - the coming of God's presence into our world and into our lives - is something to be celebrated in all times and places, and is in no way limited to the Christmas season. Nor does it have to wait for any special time in our lives. In this story, God does not come in a manger, but in almost as strange a location (to us anyway), in the ark of the covenant.

The ark was a box, carried …