Hello everyone, it’s been a little while since these daily musings as we missed out the Lent Thoughts for the Day this year, but we’ve decided to bring them back! And so…
It is Advent again. Advent Sunday is the first day of the new church year, which starts these 5 or so weeks before the calendar New Year. Advent is a time of waiting and preparing. We wait for the celebration of the birth of Christ, we wait and prepare for Christ’s return – and we make room for him in our hearts. The three comings of Christ – the past, in Bethlehem, the current, into our lives, and the future, when finally, we will see Christ face to face. Like Lent, this is a time to take stock, too. To realign ourselves, to be honest, to say sorry, to get back to the essentials and to re-order our loves – to ensure that when we see Jesus, there is nothing that we have knowingly hidden or held back. Not an easy task, because we can quite easily put things off, put our best face on and put another coin in the jukebox of Christmas songs or another order on Amazon or wherever we do our Christmas shopping. It’s easy to stay busy, but hard to stop and breathe. To acknowledge the sadness, the emptiness, the anger, the hurt, the longings… and to share them all with God.
But I think, somehow, that that is what Advent is for. As we travel towards the manger in which a child will be laid, and as we travel into the future from which rays of light are already reaching us, we take off all the extra layers of protection and pretence and get ready to come as we are.
We open ourselves, one little bit every day like a Christmas present wrapped in many layers of paper and present ourselves as we happen to be before Jesus, who is himself the Christmas present above them all.
This is the journey we will be embarking on, and I hope you will join me over these next few weeks as we travel towards Christmas and towards a renewed encounter with the God of love who came to us, became like us and overcame all that traps and trips us up, so that we can know that we will never be alone, but always welcome to take another step closer into God’s embrace.
Shall we go together? To Bethlehem. I wonder what the journey will be like this year.
Getting this year’s Thought for the Day
Elsa is in Benin for the first week or so of Advent where internet is a bit sporadic at times. You can find these Thoughts for the Day on our website at the following address online: https://newbridgebaptistchurch.co.uk/category/daily-thoughts/ or on the church’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PentrefNewbridge We will endeavour to get emails to you from the end of next week again.