Growing up Baptist, we didn’t do Advent. While December meant rehearsing for the annual Christmas pageant, several Sundays in December, the other days resembled normal Christmas: baking, shopping, decorating,wrapping, Daddy preparing sermons and Mama making sure there’d be enough bathrobes for the shepherds.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, even when Daddy, a perfectionist, got frustrated with me for messing up the tinsel on our tree. The Magnavox record player contributed the sacred, playing mostly Christmas carols or the Messiah. Once in a while, we got worldly, switched from records and WMBI to another radio station and sang along to Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, Gene Autry’s Rudolph and Perry Como’s I’ll Be Home for Christmas.
Life.
Today, our small Advent group, gathered to discuss Tim Keller’s Hidden Christmas, The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. Doing the assigned reading over the past few days, reminded me of the gift of Advent…the gift of slow. Advent’s about anticipation, not accumulation, where Christmas Truth, sometimes gets buried in wrapping paper and credit card bills.
Today’s lesson took us back to the Old Testament with “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…(Isaiah 9:2,5-7) and into the New Testament with “Jesus is the Light.”(John 8:12)
Tim Keller writes,”Jesus is the Light of the world, because he brings a new life to replace our spiritual deadness, shows us the truth that heals our spiritual blindness, and because he is the beauty that breaks our addictions to money, sex and power. He is the light for us when all other lights go out.”
That’s really Good News.
“Jesus is the light when all other lights go out.”
Neither you, nor I, are ever left totally in the dark.
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Advent’s about anticipation, not accumulation – such a good reminder! As if Jesus isn’t “gift” enough?!