Season of Advent
A gift to you as we celebrate the birth of a savior half a world away.
The Israel/Palestine region was hit with quite a storm last week. Maybe you heard about it. Maybe you noticed that we switched the order of authors because someone (aka me) did not have power or internet access. It was an amazing storm, and just what the doctor ordered for a kid who is missing the snow of Washington and Montana.
“Prepare the way of the Lord.”
When the snow came, it came fast. Thursday night we received over a foot of snow in my city of Ramallah. That is a lot of snow, and, as you can imagine, this region isn’t really capable of handling that much snow. I went out for a walk on Friday after the major snow, and all I saw were down trees, telephone wires, and no electricity in most of the city. People here do not own snow boots or shovels. I watched as people cleaned off their walks with garden hoes, push brooms, and buckets; all the while keeping their shoes wrapped in plastic bags.
Preparing for Today
Mark 1:1-8
An olive grove blanketed in snow in Jerusalem.
Photo by Jeff
Advent is about preparing. But what are we preparing for? Christmas? The coming of baby Jesus? Presents? Time with family? Those are all things that can be good to prepare for. We have been doing the same here in Palestine. But when the snow hits, what happens? We are caught with our pants down.
Advent is not just about preparing for Christmas. If we prepare bread only for tomorrow, what will we eat today? I have often sung and spoken the words “Now is the Kingdom and now is the day.” These words still cause me to reflect. Christmas is great, but there are still a handful of days until we get there. What shall we do with those days?
I think the answer is in what John the Baptist did. John goes out and proclaims the coming of the Lord. He cried out that he is not “worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of [the Lord’s] sandals.” He too was waiting for the Messiah. However, he did not just wait around preparing solely for that day. He went out and baptized. He worked in the word as it was to make each day better.
People are hungry. They are cold and tired. Each day billions of people around the world live without adequate food, shelter, healthcare, and access to potable water. There are people who are living in the prisons of concrete and steel, and some in the prisons of their own minds. Christmas is a happy day, one that should be prepared for, but we must not neglect each day that comes first.
John cries for us to “prepare the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight.” Each day requires us to build that path. We build for a goal, but we cannot neglect the work of each day’s preparation and work to get though a single day’s building. “Now is the Kingdom, and now is the day.”
Today is a good day to get started on the work for today.
-Kevin