Christmas is Coming
Today, we are surrounded by sights and sounds that all say the same thing: “Hurry up, Christmas is coming.” Hurry up and send out your Christmas cards. Hurry up and make your vacation plans. Hurry up and find those perfect gifts. Hurry up and get ready!
Yet, the season of Advent requires a different kind of preparation. In fact, Advent is the very antidote to our consumeristic, fast-paced culture. Advent invites us to slow down, to be still and to wait.
However, waiting goes directly against our cultural upbringing. We don’t like to wait—in traffic, on the phone, in the store and especially not at the department of motor vehicles or post office! Instead, we are told over and over again, “Get going! Do something! Don’t just sit there and wait!”
I don’t know about you, but this is something with which I really struggle. I have to admit that I have been raised to find my worth and value in what I do and in what others think about me; or at least what I think others think about me.
Perhaps I’m alone here, but I don’t think I am. I think many of us buy into the lie that we are the sum total of our accomplishments and achievements; that our worth and value are based upon what we do. So, it is no wonder when we do stop and wait, we find ourselves feeling helpless, useless and insignificant.
However, the Gospel reminds us that our identity and hope don’t rest in what we do, but in what Jesus has already done for us. After all, it was God who acted when we could not. It was God who saved us when we couldn’t save ourselves. The call of the Gospel is not that we learn to rely upon ourselves, but that we rely completely on the grace, mercy and love of God.
So, this season of Advent, may we stop and wait, remembering that our identity, our hope and our salvation is not found in our doing; but instead it’s found in what God has already done for us when He first entered our world as a tiny defenseless baby in the first Advent, and in what He promises to do for us when He returns again in power and glory in His second Advent.
