Advent, Mystery, and the Art of Spaciousness: Writing with Gaps, Living with Gaps
Advent arrives quietly. God comes gently in the stillness. He doesn’t rush. It’s a season filled with unfolding mystery.
God says, “My Presence comes in the spaces you do not fill.”
He chooses empty moments. Silence. Margins. A holy spaciousness.
Advent asks us to notice the spaces, to pay attention to what is not yet revealed. It offers time for pauses and reflection, making connections that aren’t quick, easy, or obvious.
Good writing does the same thing. It creates gaps, trusting readers to fill them. Writers assume their audience is intelligent and curious. They don’t need to explain every emotion or implication. Instead, writers show enough for readers to connect the dots. Rather than spelling out every detail like this: He was nervous because he was about to confess his long-held secret, the writer offers, “He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. ‘I… I need… I need to tell you something.’”
The behavior or image conveys the idea. Like a puzzle’s edges hint at the scene to come, giving the edge of things leaves room for the imagination. We can over-explain and become formulaic and flat in our delivery of thoughts, or we can leave gaps to create space for encounters where readers can infer meaning on their own.
Gaps are places where truth can breathe, where the Spirit moves and speaks, where discovery slowly dawns, like the way dawn breaks over Bethlehem.
Advent presents the invitation not to rush, not to fix everything, nor to fill every silence. Instead, it says, “Wait. Watch. Wonder.” It whispers, “Hush, be still.”
The holy is often revealed only to those willing to slow down and listen in the gaps.
That’s exactly what good writing does as well.
Just as Advent allows for longing and anticipation of The Story, good writing creates space for the reader to enter the story. Both practices resist the desire to explain everything and honor the sacredness of incompleteness.
Both invite us to slow down. There is a holiness in the unfinished.
In Advent, we stand somewhere between promise and fulfillment. The story is already known, but not yet fully experienced. We light candles one at a time. We move slowly and deliberately, as if enlarging our ability to receive.
Writing with gaps functions the same way.
When we leave space—when we stop spoon-feeding the reader every thought, emotion, or interpretation—we foster a sense of expectation. A quiet ache of discovery. A partnership between writer and reader.
Advent says:
You don’t need to have the whole story to begin.
Good writing says:
You don’t have to tell the whole story for it to unfold.
Just as Advent encourages spaciousness over saturation, writing with brevity and white space achieves the same effect.
December often overflows everywhere: calendars, inboxes, shopping carts, obligations. Lists to complete. Gifts to purchase. Parties to attend. The rush. Trying to fit in more. Doing more. Going more. Hurrying more. We overfill and feel the overwhelm.
Advent asks for the opposite posture: spaciousness.
Space for breath.
Space for wonder.
Space for mystery that doesn’t rush to solve itself.
Finding the Space You Need
In writing, we often crowd the page with explanations. We fear the reader might miss something unless we point to it with neon signs. Yet fullness on the page—like fullness in life—can smother.
White space, subtlety, silence, suggestion: these are the Advent parts of writing.
A line break is a small candle lit.
A withheld explanation is a quiet night in Bethlehem.
A metaphor left unexplained is a star you don’t chase, but simply follow.
The reader notices.
The Spirit stirs.
The words hold mystery.
Fragments invite the reader to explore, follow the clues, and sit with tension in the unresolved. Ambiguity gives readers space to fill in the gaps with emotional connections and profound questions. It allows the unspoken to whisper in the silence as the tension lingers between the lines.
The Spaciousness of the Mystery
Mystery becomes an invitation, not a problem to be solved.
Advent reframes mystery as something sacred. Worth lingering with. Worth savoring.
When we leave narrative or emotional gaps in writing, we aren’t being evasive—we’re honoring the reader’s imagination, intuition, and humanity.
In Advent, God comes near not through spectacle, but through subtlety:
a young girl’s yes,
a long journey in the dark,
a birth unnoticed by almost everyone.
It’s a story that asks us not to decode it, but to dwell inside it.
What if our writing did the same?
What if our writing allows theology and encounter to blend, so the left and right brains can dance in wonder?
To write with gaps, we go slow.
We trust the reader to discover meaning without it being hammered into their brain.
To live Advent well, we also slow down. We trust that hope develops in shadows and silence, not in haste.
Advent slows our pace so our attention can return.
Writing with spaciousness slows the reader so meaning can return.
In both cases, slowness is not laziness—it’s reverence.
The best part?
Leaving space lets others step in.
It allows the reader and the soul to connect with the word on the page and the Word Himself.
A reader fills in the emotional gaps not because you guided them, but because you invited them.
A soul enters the mystery of Advent not because everything is explained, but because something deeper is stirred.
Both practices honor the truth that meaning is not delivered.
Meaning is discovered.
This Advent, try writing—and living—with gaps.
Write lines that breathe.
Leave emotions implied rather than announced.
Let silence carry weight.
Let imagery do more than explanation can.
May this also extend into your everyday life:
Let the calendar have blank days.
Let prayers sometimes be silent.
Let mystery be a friend, not a stranger.
Jesus came as a mystery and taught through mystery.
He didn’t spoon-feed His listeners. Instead, He told stories and engaged people through mystery and wonder. He didn’t answer every question or explain everything. He left the ending off at times, and we became curious and intrigued.
Mystery invites us to observe, to slow down, and to wonder at the unexpected, the unexplained, and the unanswered.
Go slow.
Let spaciousness in.
Let the gaps become holy.
Because sometimes what we leave unsaid is where the Word finally enters.
Leave the spaces unclaimed.
Ease into the calm, quiet pauses.
Linger, unhurried.
Invite your readers to such spaciousness.
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If you’d like to learn more about the mysteries of writing and how to create spaciousness in your writing and spiritual life, let’s connect. I’d love to chat.
