Getting ready
A fascinator (ridiculous word) and an Advent calendar – that sums up this week for me, getting ready for Christmas and getting ready for my son’s wedding this weekend!!!!
Advent is the getting ready month. We are getting ready for God coming to visit.
If I’m honest, it took me a long time to realise that God visiting earth is a two-part plan. Part One was a quiet affair (apart from yells of a teenage mum giving birth with no gas and air). There were no cameras, no social media. Yes, there were angel choirs but their audience consisted of a few lowdown, grubby shepherds barely comprehending that this moment, this baby, changes everything. If God loved us enough to become one of us, then life can never be the same.
The shocker is that too many people have never heard this best of all news. My decorator last week asked me incredulously, “Really, are you telling me that Jesus was God?!” He thought humanity had been put on earth by aliens and was intrigued. How many others around us have no idea about the wonder at the heart of Christmas?
Advent is our opportunity to remember that Part One resounds through history. It is too easy to lose sight of it as we scramble out of Black Friday into where on earth can I source a turkey, shall I have chicken instead? And where is the Advent wreath buried in my messy cupboards? Before we know it, the meaning of Christmas is buried under the tinsel. But without Part One, we would be lost in our sin, God distant and unknowable. No light shining in our darkness. No Saviour. No Jesus to walk from that cradle to the Cross.
Glory, glory, glory to God who took on human DNA to recreate his image in us. That’s why Christmas is a celebration worth getting ready for.
But we must not forget Part Two. Part One was a whisper compared to the symphony ahead. The second visit will not be a quiet affair. God gives us this brief span of our lives and humanity a span of history to respond to him, but he will wind it up when Jesus returns not as a tiny baby but as Judge of all to make all things right. We need to get ready. We need to heed John the Baptist and make ready a highway for the King, bring down high places of pride and raise up valleys of injustice, fear and shame. The King is returning.
The last month has had some tough days and nights but I can feel the joy bubbling up at the prospect of Connor and Freya’s wedding. It has taken a lot to get ready (!) but worth it. There is another wedding ahead worth getting ready for - which will bring even greater joy when our heavenly bridegroom, the King of Kings returns for his bride, the Church. That will be the wedding party to beat any party that you have ever been to. Oh, the joy that will fill our hearts!
