How Can We Possibly Prepare For Such An Event?

“What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people…
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” 
John 1: 3, 5 & 9

 

Have you ever sat down and really pondered long and hard about what we are preparing for in Advent? Of course, there are the gifts to buy, food to prepare, decorations to adorn our homes and those amazing liturgies that we love. But why? Yes – Jesus was born a long time ago in an animal feeding trough in a barn to a very young couple. Oh yes – there was that amazing announcement made to Mary by the Angel Gabriel, telling her that she was going to have a son and her son would be the son of God. Now the event is getting so big that it could burst any seams that we have put around it. It gets bigger though. This life that was in him was and is the life of all people – that includes you and me! Thomas Merton exclaimed, “He is truly in me.” This amazing mystery of Christmas and Epiphany is a time that invites us all to take possession of what is already ours. This is a pretty big mystery. How can we possibly wrap ourselves around it? As I tell the children in Godly Play, this mystery is so huge that the church gives us 4 whole weeks to get ready to enter into it or to even come close to it. The evening that I began to prepare for the Advent 1 lesson, a settling came over me. I moved in the blink of an eye from a place of just getting a task done to one of being overwhelmed by the story that I was going to tell. This story is all that really matters. God is really in me, in you, in all of us. Can you begin to imagine what the world would be like if we all awakened to this truth? The lion would truly lie down with the lamb. So how can we possibly prepare for this? Maybe there is a hidden gift in this pandemic. So many of the things that I have traditionally done cannot be done – I did not have to do the work of letting go – it has been done for me. I have a little more time. Why don’t we spend time just in wonder at what this amazing mystery is that we are getting ready for in Advent? My prayer is that none of us will walk right through the mystery and not really glimpse it at all. May we experience how this little child has changed everything. I look forward to shared conversations about this with you.