It’s time. The perforated cardboard doors are all open. All the felt pockets are empty of their trinkets. A couple days ago, we read about Ezra and Nehemiah. But, the very next reading jumped ahead hundreds of years to what they all had been talking about and waiting for. My audience was captivated.
The God who flung planets into space and kept them whirling around and around, the God who made the universe with just a word, the one who could do anything at all – was making himself small. And coming down…as a baby.
That’s what advent is all about.
The perfect to the broken, the holy to the unholy.
Jesus came.
Tonight, we will sing with countless others around the world that God with man is now residing. Somehow we will sing in unison; we’ll invite each other to come and worship, come and worship. We will light candles. We will dress our daughters in pretty dresses. Fight our sons to smile for pictures. Tomorrow, we’ll hug cousins and aunts and uncles. Laugh together, eat together, share together after we get the kids all settled in their sleeping bags or beds, wherever we can pile them all in.
Meanwhile, the needles from our tree continue to drop, and the trashmen will be greeted next week by bags of ripped paper. Credit card bills are on their way.
But, advent doesn’t just stop when the Christmas carols are no longer on the radio. I want an advent spirit. Lord, will you give me that for Christmas this year? An advent spirit? I want a spirit of expectation, to live in expectation, to live with watchfulness. It doesn’t have to be just for 24 days in December each year. I want it all year, everyday. Eyes that no longer hold my spirit back with only seeing the mundane but release my spirit with glimpses of the extraordinary.
I want to be one of the saints before the altar bending, watching long in hope and fear…everyday. Advent and Christmas at the culmination of it is just the booster shot I need.
Beautiful
Amen to that! I second that emotion!