Reflections on this Season

I adore the season of Advent. It has become my favorite time of year.

There are many traditions and doings that make this season wonderful: exchanging gifts, cutting out paper snowflakes, singing Christmas carols, visiting with friends and family. And while those things are special to me, that is not why I love Advent.

Advent has become a time to worship the God who became tiny for me. It is a marvelous, miraculous movement on God's part that I never deserved or earned, yet he still came.

My heart is always full of emotion this time of year. I marvel the courage of a young girl who accepts without question God's call to bear His Son. I remember holding my own babies, noting their weakness and dependence on me and marvel that my Saviour was also so weak. I think more about that girl and how carrying this baby must have changed her, forever. May I be changed by the Spirit's indwelling too.

I worship with shepherds and wise men who saw the baby but knew He was King. They immediately fell on their faces to worship Him. I should do the same.

I think on Joseph who was asked to do the most sacrificial thing in loving Mary and Jesus, who was not his son.

I think of the stable animals and the physical world. Did they know their Creator had come? I believe they did and the animals worshiped. And the angels who couldn't understand why God would send his son to this dirty, broken world to save people who can't even contemplate the true depth of His love for us or His majesty or His glory. But they proclaimed him with voices full of joy and honor and glory.

I am humbled, awed, inspired, and changed as I think up on our great, big, glorious Creator God, the one who knit me together, who threw the stars into the sky, who sent the rhythms of the season to spin, gave up his most precious gift, his son, for dirty, broken, sinful me (and you).

Christ has come!
Emmanuel, God with us.
Rejoice and be changed.