Advent is Here

As much as embodying pertains to displaying and showing and as much as our alternative celebration of Advent involves being salt and light (or could if we allowed it), I think possibly the deepest alternative celebration of Advent has to happen inside of us. If we do not find within ourselves something different, something special--a renewed anticipation for and sincere faith in the Christ who comes to lift up the lowly--we cannot expect any alternative we could offer to be worth getting up on a Sunday for, let alone living for. The Advent, indeed the God, we offer to the world must be offered not just in deed but in word, and I'm not just talking about words we speak but the word that is inside of us as we live and move in the hope of this season. It is a word we must speak but we will never be able to grasp it with language.
It's not just about doing different things, although that is obviously important, given what our culture does this time of year, but it's about where those things come from. What gave Mary the ability to say, "His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation" was not just the fact that she lived differently; it was because she was pregnant with the Word of God. The anticipation of a new day was so real inside her that she could speak of salvation as a present reality--"He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble"--so embodying it and offering it to the world didn't even need to be talked about, it was just happening.
As Mary was pregnant with Jesus, may we be pregnant with the Word of God so that it wells inside us and gives us such real anticipation and exhilaration that we cannot help but let it burst forth from us making salvation, through our hands and our hearts, a present reality so that the world cannot help but tremble at the thought of a new kind of world. Let the words of those great Advent hymns stir inside you a renewed hope and a real sense that something big is happening. As you worship with word, song, and deed may your worship put your feet to dancing and send you spinning as you enter the world as a resident of God's dominion. Let your heart pound with the knowledge that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Philippians 2:10).
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