December 2016 Jottings

Jottings…

Many of you know I have a part-time job at the airport, so I get to be around airline pilots a fair bit. To many of us it seems like a fairly exotic job with the travel and the fun of flying and the responsibility. The truth is it can be routine (which is a good thing because of the emphasis on passenger safety). In fact, I have heard a pilot’s job described as “hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.”

Advent can have that feeling to it for us. We have celebrated so many Christmases that it has become regular, borderline boring. The demands on time and energy to get done all we want and need to do might even make us dread the season. There are elements we look forward to whether it be the gift giving, the decorations, or the singing. We value the familiar so much that what we want is an “old fashioned Christmas.” And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But if Jesus is the reason for the season, we can’t let what is so familiar mask how momentous was the occasion of his birth. Jesus came in the fullness of time. His birth was the fulfillment of numerous Old Testament prophecies. It caused shepherds to wonder, wise men to wander and angels to sing. For those with the faith to see, they saw in Jesus the arrival of God’s Messiah, who would save us from our sins.

So let God surprise you by joy this Advent. Along with the shopping and baking and celebrating and even worship let God punctuate these events with those moments of faith and joy and love that cause us too, like the angels to praise and like the shepherds and wise men to worship. I am not calling us to “work up” fake enthusiasm but I am calling us to enter this Advent season expectantly - that God will renew in us the significance of why we make such a big deal of Christ’s birth.

We currently have an Advent series on “The Hopes and Fears of All the Years” that I hope will help facilitate that process for you and in you and through you to others. Make time to worship. Invite others.

- Pastor Brian