From The Pastor - December Spire

"Getting Ready...For What?"

The cry is consistent and constant: "Prepare the way…", and so we do. But amid all we are doing it’s important to stop and ask:

· What is it we are preparing the way for?

· What happens if our preparations are not all we want them to be?

· How do we stay centered and focused amid the craziness of the season?

While questions like these may not be new, they are important. There is value in asking them, value in pondering them.

In Luke 3 we find these words. "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places shall be made smooth…" These words describe the requirements for the emperor's travel: his ride had to be smooth and straight, as comfortable and easy as possible. The thought was that for the Messiah to come the same had to be so.

But you and I know well that God does not require everything to be just so. God is found in the rocky, rough, and crooked places, in the mountains and valleys of our lives. God does not wait until we and the world are ready.  This is why the warnings of "watch" and "wait" and "be alert" are the messages of Advent. Increasingly, they are the messages we need to hear.

There is comfort in knowing that God does not need everything to be just so.  There is also a challenge in this same knowing. Advent is about our preparing, just not always in the way we think about preparing. While "watch and wait" is an old message, it is one we still need to hear. We need to hear it because too often we don’t "get it." Despite our good intentions we get swept up in the hustle and bustle of preparing for Christmas, and forget about watching and waiting.  We are so busy doing and buying and worrying about not being too commercial, that we forget about being. We forget to be open to God and the ways God speaks to us.

Every year we decide to do it differently.  We say: “We are not going to…,[whatever it is that bogs us down]." The sad truth is we won't do it differently, unless we are intentional.  Even those of us who never have “to do lists” have them this time of year. Accepting this reality and also the craziness of the season, I invite you to do something different. Go to your "to do lists" and write in the following: STOP TODAY AND FOR 10 MINUTES THINK AND PRAY ABOUT WHAT I AM DOING AND WHY." If we do this maybe then we can weave into the tapestry of our schedules a deeper understanding of what it means to "prepare the way."

Peace,
Eric