When it comes comes to getting ready for Christmas, I am fortunate.
I think.
I am fortunate because some part of my “job” requires me to put my words and my life alongside the meaning of these days and around the sometimes too familiar Biblical texts we associate with Advent and Christmas.
Sometimes that task is deeply satisfying.
Like in those moments when I feel I come close to what is important.
Other times it feels stressful and scary.
My ordinary words alongside that timeless story.
My feeble words alongside the dream of swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and God wth us especially when the headlines in the news are of another mass shooting and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Yet, plunging into what all that means for you and me today is the risk we must take if we want to find our place in that narrative which is both thousands of years old and startling new at the very same time. At least, that is, if we want to go deeper than holiday cheer and jolly old St. Nicholas and, for a moment stand on the side of God’s grand dream meant for us and for all.
A voice cries in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord…”
We know all too well the wilderness which surrounds us.
Now we have to figure out the prepare part.
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