Advent

This weekend while we were putting up our tree, our five year old daughter came up to us and said, “I want Jesus in my heart! Does that mean He’s there?” She’s been asking a lot about becoming a Christian, so the question didn’t catch us too off guard, but after a few minutes I couldn’t help but marvel at the timing of it.

We’ve been thinking a lot about presents and decorations; we’ve been making plans for the holidays and thinking about menus for Christmas morning. We even took a minute or two to discuss plans for a bigger tree next year, moments after we had sat down from putting up our current one.

In his wisdom, one of our sons said, “Why are y’all thinking about next year already?” As I thought about all of those inconsequential things, my d a u g h t e r ‘ s question came back to mind. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the busyness of the season that it really is easy to forget about the Jesus part. Of course, we pay Him lip service, but sometimes that’s it.

I thought back 2000 some years and all of those that had been waiting for so long for the Messiah. For 400 years God had been silent, and then there came a time when the whole world was only twenty-days away from all of those prophecies coming to fruition.

We look forward to Christmas every year, anticipating time with family, gifts, good food, and familiar music. It’s so routine at this point that it’s easy to forget there was a time when people were waiting for the very thing we are celebrating, but they had no way to know when it would come. As fulfilling as Christmas morning can be, how much more so would it have been for those who had waited with blind faith for generations for His arrival?

Before church Sunday, I caught my daughter sitting on the floor marveling at the tree and it was a reminder of what we all ought to do this month.

May we all use this advent season to sit in wonder at what we’ll celebrate.