First Sunday of Advent: The Days Are Coming

The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and Judah. Jer 33:14

The days are coming. What days are coming for me, for you? I look out at December and see a lot of days, busy days, and it's easy to get just as caught up in them as in the idea of the end days. There may not be signs of end times, of retribution and judgment this Advent, but there are days that are coming.

Advent is such a hopeful, short, precious time of the church year. Everyone knows that December slips through the fingers like so much dry snow. Caught up in the throngs of shoppers, breakfasts with Santa, school concerts, craft projects, caroling field trips, marathon baking sessions, and frantic house cleaning or packing, hark how the bells, sweet silver bells, all seem to say, throw cares away suddenly it's December 23rd and you haven't done all those little things, important things, you promised yourself you would do this year. Or maybe you suddenly stand up, head erect, and watch all the chaos around you and think, wait, I don't even have a promise to myself this year. I don't give myself the chance to fail at Advent because I didn't engage in the season at all. Gaily they ring while people sing songs of good cheer, Christmas is here. But Christmas isn't here. Not yet.

It is so easy to just go with this flow, get caught up and forget what we're really preparing for. What is coming is the incarnation. As Christians, I think most of us focus on the resurrection as the earth-moving life-is-never-the-same-again event of our faith. And it is. But what about the incarnation? Christmas isn't trees and On on they send on without end parties and what the heck am I going to wear I didn't do the Christmas picture for the cards and we still don't have an outdoor electric outlet, dear husband, how are we going to do any kind of Christmas lights, anyway? December may sometimes be this, but Christmas is more.

Christmas is God pouring divinity out into the person of Christ. What could be more giving, more amazing, more unbelievable than that? If we truly believe in the divinity of Christ, Christmas should fill us with as much wonder and amazement, confusion, faith, bewilderment, and ceaseless prayer as Easter Sunday does.

The days are coming--we all know it. December is booked solid from Thanksgiving weekend to New Year's Eve. Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, Christ admonishes us in today's Gospel. It's almost like he's been living in my house. Like he's watched me at Christmas parties or arguments with my husband about why we're still doing a gift exchange with second cousins we never see. Watched me snap at my kids because my nerves are at their very limit. Watched me stay up way too late finishing things that really don't matter. It's like Christ has seen this all before.

Oh wait, he has.

The days are coming. Indeed, they are upon us.