Celebrating Advent and Christmas

Dec 04, 2014

The First Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of a new ‘season’ – and a new Year (the Gospel of Matthew). Advent prepares and challenges us to be ready to welcome the second coming of Jesus and then turns us to celebrate and remember with joy the first coming of Jesus. Will you celebrate Advent AND Christmas? What do you do to celebrate and welcome a friend? How could these expressions be practiced toward Jesus this Advent / Christmas?

As the Christmas season and advertising moves us toward end of year celebrations and ‘climbing up the mountain’ of the ‘shopping mall,’ how could you also give time for your friendship with God? Consider an Advent commitment to an ‘hour to be awake from sleep’. Use your imagination to reflect what it would mean to ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’. Is there anything you are doing in your life that Jesus wouldn’t do?

Jesus uses three short parables to break into our Christmas comfort zone. A sudden flood is something tragic unless one is prepared ahead of time. What does ‘building and entering the ark’ mean today? What else is there to do beyond ‘eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage’?

Imagine if your work colleague, friend, family member, who you live ‘side-by-side’ with each day, is suddenly revealed as different in God’s eyes. A parable shocks our imagination with a surprise to make us change our life. Do you wish to be taken into a deeper relationship with God or to be ‘left’ alone ‘in the field’ or ‘at the mill’? What would divine perception see in you which human perception cannot see?

To stop a thief entering your house you have put in place certain practices or habits (locking doors and windows, turning lights on, having mail collected by a friend…) so that you are ‘always ready,’ ‘awake’. What spiritual practices could you commit to so as to constantly keep ‘spiritually awake’? Have you been ‘broken into’? What wisdom for the journey was discovered to guide your future?

A famous retreat leader had hundreds of excited people waiting for very wise words and deep insights into their problems. He arrived at the microphone and asked: ‘Hands up who wants to go to Heaven?’ Everyone put their hand up. ‘Hands up those who are ready to go now’? No-one put their hand up. He said: you may consider asking yourself why you are not ready… Are you ready?

What is one action that you will do to be ‘living-the-word’ this week? -- livingtheword. org