My new passport

I have my new passport! YAY!!! Praise the Lord for His provision. I fly to the US on Wednesday, so the timing is perfect! God is good.

Oh yeah...as for leaving...I am pretty much packed and ready to go. I am very much looking forward to seeing my family and friends, but am not naive enough to think there won't be any reverse culture shock to deal with. Oh the joys of transitions.

Christmas and the Cross

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. I’ll admit I’ve never really celebrated Advent. I think I want to change that though. A few months ago, I read a book by Lauren Winner entitled girl meets GOD. Winner grew up practicing Judaism, converted to Orthodox Judaism during her college years, and then converted to Christianity (attending an Anglican church) during graduate school. I am not sure I completely agree with everything she said, but her thoughts on Christmas and Advent challenged me. Allow me to share with you some of what she said:

“Perhaps the problem is that we don’t know what the meaning of this holiday, of Jesus’ pushing into the world, is. If we did, we wouldn’t have to worry about consumerism; if we knew what the Incarnation meant, we’d be so preoccupied with awe that we wouldn’t notice all the shopping…

Jo Bailey Wells has an Advent rule. She doesn’t go to Christmas parties held before Christmas. She says Advent is about anticipation, not about celebrating weeks before His birth. The waiting, she says, is meant to be a little anxious. I picture Jan Austen heroines. They never are quiet sure if their intended will come. We Christians can be sure, we can rest easy in the promises of Scripture. But we are meant to feel a touch of that anxious, handkerchief-wringing expectation all the same.

The calendar tells us that this all culminates on December 25th, but really the whole season slouches toward Easter. Jesus becomes incarnate now, in that manger in Bethlehem, but if His incarnation is meant to make Him more relatable to us, if we are meant to have better access to God because our God has a body like we have, if we relate to Him better because He knows what it is like to weep and throw up and be tempted and suffer, then the Incarnation that starts on Christmas isn’t finished until Good Friday. And the miracles that start in the strange, inexplicable Virgin Birth aren’t finished until the Resurrection. As Reverend Barbara Cawthorne Crafton wrote of the Virgin Birth, ‘Hard as it is to swallow, it is nothing compared with what we’ll have to deal with come Easter morning, a few short months from now. Look on it as a little something by way of a warm-up.’ Even his birthplace takes us to the Last Supper: Jesus, the Bread of Life, is born in Bethlehem, bet lechem, ‘house of bread,’ and at the Last Supper He will break bread for us, and then on the cross He will break His body. Nothing in Scripture, even the names of birthplace towns, is coincidence.” (p.35-36)

I’ll admit, I don’t know much about Advent. Who celebrates it? Why? (I need to do some research.) But I think I like it. It seems more Christ-like to spend this time before Christmas focusing on Christ and what He did for us rather than focusing on shopping and Christmas parties. I’m not saying that fellowshipping with friends and family is bad, but what is my focus?

Yesterday at church the first Sunday of Advent was definitely commemorated. The service focused on darkness and light. Christ came to give us light (John 3:19) - to rescue us from the darkness – that we might have our thirst quenched by the Living Water (John 7:37-38) and a Shelter in the storm (Psalm 55:6-8).

Recently I’ve definitely felt the darkness of my own imperfection. (They say that transition makes you more aware of your weaknesses. I think they’re right.) Sometimes I can temporarily pretend my depravity isn’t as deep as it really is, but soon that façade comes crashing down and I’m left staring my weaknesses in the face. Thankfully, God gives grace and mercy. Little by little, He is making me more like Himself. Sure it’s hard. Sure it’s probably only happening one-tenth of a millimeter at a time. Sure it’s sometimes one step forward and one step back. But this is life on earth. I am thankful for the promise that I have the promise that one day I will spend eternity in the presence of my Savior, where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).