Reading
But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!
Romans 13:11-14
Reflection
Christmas has much to teach us about preparation—at least, if we’re wise. You don’t wake up Christmas morning and start thinking about what gifts to buy for your family. If you’re hosting the big Christmas meal, you don’t start preparing the day of. And I know there are people who wait until Christmas Eve to go shopping, but after doing that once or twice, I don’t care to ever repeat that experience again.
Presents and meals certainly matter. They are demonstrations of our love for the people closest to us. But they are not, of course, the most important part of Christmas. The most important thing is the coming of Jesus, and if we want to celebrate him well, we need to prepare.
This is not something we really know how to do. While we generally know how to prepare for the cultural aspects of Christmas—making lists, buying and wrapping presents, mailing Christmas cards, etc.— most of us have a lot less experience with preparing for the coming of the Messiah.
In some ways, the question of how to prepare for Jesus’ coming is very complex. It’s the work of a lifetime. We spend our lives preparing for his coming, allowing his grace to transform us from the inside out until we surrender ourselves completely to him.
In other ways, it’s quite simple: just take your next step toward Jesus. This will look different for everyone, but it might be spending more time with him in prayer and in the scriptures, letting go of habits that take you further from him, or serving others—whatever is the right next step for you. As we offer ourselves to him, his grace transforms us into the people he created us to be.
Our family has an Advent wreath with candles that we light each night at dinner. We also have an Advent devotion book that we try to read, but on nights that our schedule or our temperaments don’t allow it, we let the candles be enough. Cece, our four-year-old, asks why we are only lighting one candle instead of all four. While she may not grasp it yet, she’s beginning to learn what it means to wait and prepare. Lighting a candle doesn’t seem like much, but it is shaping us in subtle ways.
There are any number of ways you might prepare for the coming of Jesus. Individually this year, I’m following daily scripture readings from a lectionary—a set of readings that goes along with the Christian calendar—and fasting on Wednesdays. Your Advent practices might be similar or very different. The important thing is taking a step toward Jesus.
How are you preparing for the coming of Jesus? Wherever you are, begin today so that you might be able to celebrate the joy of his coming all the more.
Prayer
Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness,
and put on the armor of light,
now in the time of this mortal life
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;
that in the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge both the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who lives
and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
(Collect for the First Sunday in Advent from The Book of Common Prayer)
