December is an important month to me....no, not because of all of the Christmas planning to come and things to do but because of the coming of Christmas...the coming of Christ.
All year long I desire and yearn for the slow...still pace I set for myself in December. I take time off work to be with family, friends and Christ. It amazes me how the reality of Christ changes for me. Because when I am slow and still, I cry at the realness of Christ. It's when I hurry and rush and do, do, do that his realness diminishes. The month of December comes and I anticipate all year long...anticipate the nights with my family, serving family and friends, decorating our house with Jesus Christmas decorations, I anticipate the snow and the beauty of it and I cry..........because this Christ loves me...someone so incredibly shallow and small.
For me Christmas doesn't start with Black Friday shopping or the hustle and bustle, for me Christmas begins with the coming of Christ. Listen to this...
"Christ, who is there in the beginning, the voice calling out of darkness, an echo in cosmic emptiness, speaks it by the commanding word of His mouth: Let there be....
Let there be light and land and living beasts...
But you? You alone were formed by a huddle of hearts: Let us make human beings.
The authority of God made all creation. But it was the affection of God that made all His Children. The three persons of the Trinity - Father God, Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit - gathered close together to imagine you.
No matter your story before, this is your beginning now: you were formed by Love...for love.
John Calvin, he wrote it like a reviving breath - that every human being is 'formed to be a spectator of the created world and given eyes that he might be led to its author...first [to] cast our eyes upon the very beautiful fabric of the world in which [God] wishes to be seen by us....As soon as we acknowledge God to be the supreme architect, who has erected the beauteous fabric of the universe, our minds must necessarily be ravished with wonder at His infinite goodness, wisdom and power.'
Ravished with wonder.
Be still and know and watch love come down...be awed at the God-struck wonder of this world."
Advent....the coming of Christ. To people who are weak, small and hopeless. "Out of the last and forgotten son of Jesse comes forth one tender branch that will grow into a crown of thorns...a rugged cross...your ladder back to God. Jesus will go to impossible lengths to rescue you. Out of a stump...comes a twig, a twig that sprouts and will be the scepter that defeats your sin...and lets you grow again. Christ. He comes small for the small, he comes in a micro-macro miracle and he whispers, Seek Me. The small Babe of Bethlehem, the dismissed Son of God, the stripped and beaten Messiah hanging exposed on the Tree - He begs us to spend the attention of Advent on the little, the least, the lonely, the lost. Because in the rush, in the hurry, in our addiction to speed - it might just be a bit like stepping on the shoot that sprouts from the stump. Advent, it is made of the moments.
This slow unfurling of grace."
~Ann Voskamp~
He came for the small...the weak...the lonely and lost....respond...now.
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