Christmas Time is Near...The Week of Hope: Days 1 and 2

Yesterday we were out after church and we had one of those lovely moments.  We walked into Lowe's garden center which was filled with fresh spruce and fir trees for Christmas.  It smelled so good!  And what fun to watch as people chose a tree, had it cut to length and then to watch them rewrap them.   This is something I've never before seen happen and I found it all most intriguing.  Still more intriguing was the sight of a lovely handmade wreath.  I've no idea just where the young couple found it but my gracious!  I'd have loved one of those myself.  It has made me more determined than ever to get busy decorating my own home which has been rather half heartedly attended to at the moment.  I came home and sat down to make out a list...It always begins with a list for me.

I'm at that stage where things feel a bit much: too much to do, too little time to do it all in.  But I don't want to lose sight of what this season is really meant to be about.   Our church passed out books to each family this season to use for Advent.



Advent is essentially a focus upon the season of Christ's birth.  I thought I'd share my daily observations as I read through these devotionals.  These posts will mostly be short and sweet.  Today's will be a little longer since I'm covering two days of readings.

Week one is called the week of Hope.  Advent  means "awaiting".  I've become increasingly aware as I grow older, and as we've incorporated a Friday evening Shabat in our spiritual observations, that we are always moving towards something greater than ourselves.   During my routine week, my focus is often upon Friday at sunset: what I can do to prepare my home and my heart for that much looked forward to time of the week.   In this season, we choose to focus on the birth of Christ, the coming of the Savior of the World, the Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor.  We are not looking just toward the birth of a baby, which is anticipation enough if you are about to be a parent or grandparent but of something we know to be of greater value and higher impact than even our precious awaited bundle of joy.  We are yearning towards a fulfillment of prophecy.

Day One:  The first stage of that fulfillment is Hope.  Hope is the substance of things longed for but not seen.  Our pastor yesterday shared that Abraham is hailed in the New Testament for his belief that God would do what He said He'd do.  But then he took us back through to the book of Genesis and we watched through six chapters as Abraham, an aged man when God first spoke to him, continued to age as he waited the fulfillment of the prophecy God spoke over him.  Did you realize that something close to 40 years passed between the first moment God spoke to Abraham and the fulfillment of prophecy?

So hope's first lesson is to wait.

Waiting is not an easy task for me.  I am a mover and shaker.  I want to get things done.  I am not a type A driven personality at all, but still, I am impatient.  Like Abraham and Sarah I am likely to try to take things into my own hands (Hagar and Ishmael).  I am learning that forcing God to move more quickly is not the answer.  Instead I must learn to wait patiently, clinging stubbornly to the hope of what was promised me.  Never letting doubt creep in for very long.  It's not an easy task, this thing called hope.

For this first day of Advent, one of the questions put before us is "What can you do to carve out the time and space needed to engage in the journey toward Christmas?"   A daily focus upon what is before us this month, a remembrance of how God fulfilled His promise and prophecy of a Savior is of import.

To that end I have promised to not allow my morning Bible study time to escape me.  It's all to easy to focus so hard on my to do list that I 'forget' to take that morning prayer and study time as I plunge headlong into the start of my day.   I will listen to the old hymn carols.  This week's suggested hymn is 'Away In the Manger'.  

I chuckle as I type that title.  Bess has been teaching Josh Christmas Carols.  He sang me his version of Jingle Bells this week which includes 'Santa goes "Ho Ho Ho" '.   Bess asked him to sing 'Away In the Manger' and Josh said very seriously, "No, I can't...that one is HARD."   I chuckled then, too,  but now that I'm typing out this first day, I think of how hard waiting is.  I think of how difficult it is to be focused on Christ in a season that has become about everything except Christ.  So this week I will listen to 'Away In the Manger' and sing along.

Day 2:  Light pollution.   According to the National Geographic light pollution occurs in cities.  It is what prevents city dwellers from focusing upon the stars.

Last week while my in-laws were visiting, we came in one evening at sunset.  As we entered the house, I began to draw the curtains closed.  My sister in law stood outside with my brother in law as he tried to fix something that had gone wrong with the back door of their SUV.  She came in a little later and said to me, "It's too dark out here...John should put up flood lights all around the house."  I laughed because when we first moved here, John meant to do just that.  Thankfully the budget was tight and the security light we rent each month from the electric company has been the only light we've had for outdoors all these years.

When we are out past dark it is our joy to look up to the heavens and see the glimmering stars.   We can even see the Milky Way and it's path through the heavens above us.  There's nothing like a cold clear night to make the skies sparkle with a myriad of stars, near and far, large and small.  Surrounded by darkness, we look up and see the skies alight.  It's a moment when I feel both a deep sense of awe and humbleness.  How small and tiny I seem to be compared to that great glory above me and how invisible I feel in the gathering darkness.

Hope is the star shining in the darkness.

Unbelievably, the stars are there in the daytime as well, but we can't see them.  The sun is so bright that the stars fade even when the day is dreary and cloudy.

How often do we forget our hopefulness when there are troubles assailing us?  When the world is too much with us?

It has seemed to me to be an especially dark time in the past few years.  Politics alone are enough to cause us to look away from hope.  It isn't about who we voted for or didn't vote for.  It's about being distracted from the ephemeral and focusing only upon the dingy and dirty and polluted things.   We're bombarded by the world from our television, our computer, from news headlines.  We are pummeled by worry over things we feel helpless to change.  We lose sight of our hope.

Yet it is still there.

Today's questions deal with the 'mind pollution' that causes us to lose sight of hope.  What causes you to feel hopeless?  What can you do to change your focus?

Here's what I mean to do.  I'm going to take a few moments each day to sit and just gaze at the lighted Christmas tree without any other lights on, without any television blaring in the background, without the glow of the phone face or computer screen to distract me.  I'm going to focus on the shining beauty before me and think about how a star led the Magi to the Christ child.   One light, a light that they followed by night and believed to still be there before them in the day though they could not see it, as they traveled steadily on.  And I'm going to slip out on the porch at least once each evening and look heavenward and remind myself once again that I am insignificant in the scheme of things.  It's not all about me and what I've got to do.  It's about something far greater.  It's about Him.  Today's song "Light of the World".