The season of Advent

At A Holy Experience, Ann Voskamp writes,

Turning the calendar page early this morning in our warming farm house, and there it is, in all it’s fullness —

This is the season of Advent, of coming, of the coming Kingdom of God.

This season of the coming of God, this Advent — it begins a new year for the church calendar, a fresh start.

What the world sees as the end of the year, the church sees as the beginning, because this is always the gentle, kind way of the Kingdom of God: the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and all things are gloriously upside down in the Kingdom of the King.

We want buckets full of things, but in the domain of God the main thing is to kindly pour your bucket out only to be fulfilled in the most meaningful kind of way.

Read more here.

Sometimes the only way to stay standing is to lash yourself to SomeOne stronger.

Ann Voskamp remembers when her sister cut down a pine one Christmas. It was crooked, so they tied it to the bannister of the stairs. Ann writes at A Holy Experience,

Sometimes the only way to stay standing is to lash yourself to SomeOne stronger.

...That’s what drove the kid sister out of a broken and bruising home and across pitch black fields to the woods for a tree to haul home — she had desperately needed to string up light.

...More than gifts, the kid had needed meaning.

Of all the things we want, what we want most is meaning.

...Standing there at the prayer table, it only takes me a minute to simply light a candle in the middle of a week that moves directly from the tradition of Giving Thanks to God —- to the tradition of Advent and Wanting and Waiting for More of God.

...Because I wish I could somehow go back across our darkened farm fields and find my little kid sister out there in the cold and give her that —

a Coming and a Christmas that was so glorious you couldn’t unwrap it in a day or two, but you had to unwrap it over weeks —-

...Yeah, let the snow keep falling if it wants.

Let the clock tick time brave into the night.

Let the stars shimmer defiant hope over everywhere that’s dark.

The Lord knows we all need it —

Let this be a Christmas full of His Light, a Christmas full of Meaning, because The Perfect Christmas Gift has Meaning.

Because the Light, it can’t be stopped and it won’t be stopped —

In through the broken-hearted cracks of the world, in through all our shards —

even now, the light comes in like a benediction.

The Light always Coming.

Read more here.

How do we get ready for Christmas?

Ann Voskamp writes today,

Advent – this is the season of preparing that prepares us for any season of life — because we are preparing our lives for Christ to enter in — which prepares for us the life without end.

Is that the ultimate purpose of this life — the preparing for the next life?

Is this why Christmas, Advent, unlike any other time of year, glimmers with a glimpse of heaven — because it’s the time of year we’re fulfilling our purpose, preparing for Christ and His coming again?

The Christmas tree’s been lit for weeks, a beacon, a preparing, an anticipation.

Why is it easier to make Christmas cookies than to make our hearts ready for Christ?

Turning the calendar page to December doesn’t turn life into this dance of the sugarplum fairies.

Christ shied from the sanitized — He chose the dung heaps and entered in at our stinking places. Thank God. I need a God like that.

Our loving God always comes to us wrapped in the unlikely.

Is that how we get ready for Christmas? By readying the heart to receive the gift of every moment — no matter what the moment unexpectedly holds — as a gift of His love?

Glad tidings of great joy

Though she rarely posts on Sunday, Ann Voskamp is out with her Advent video number three. Her first video was about Hope, which the presence of Christ brings. Number two was Peace, and the third, this week, is the Joy candle.

Ache is not the last word for those who believe God. Jesus is. Because of God's gift of Jesus, grace is now our oxygen.

Ann describes joy as an unstoppable reality for the Jesus follower.

When our lives are "large with Christ," our lives will birth joy.

Being a Jesus follower means more than just believing. The opposite of joy isn't unhappiness. The opposite of joy is unbelief!

Very real sacrifices turn into very real joy. Gospel = joy news. Eucharisteo = grace. We give thanks, and get joy. Joy is possible wherever you are, because Jesus is wherever you are.

The enemy of our soul is a prosecutor. He gets you to say that God and others are not doing enough, and you, yourself are not enough.

What stops joy? Ann says it is expectation. She asks, why deprive ourselves of joy's oxygen?

Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. Flames need oxygen to light.

Hebrews: "For the joy that was set before Him, He went to the cross."

Do you see why I go to Ann's blog every single day?

Week one: Hope

Ann Voskamp wants us to have an upside-down Christmas this year. To encounter Jesus in a fresh way. Advent: coming...waiting. We are the people living after Christ's resurrection: the hallelujah people, always anticipating the coming of Christ again.

Week one: the Hope candle. We reach out to that one tree; the tree on which He hung, and we hold onto Him. But who knew that the limbs of the tree, that love, were reaching for us!

He doesn't write answers for us in the stars; He writes answers for us in His scars. What ultimately comforts us is not knowing His plan, but knowing His presence. Look for His presence this week in small ways, in tender shoots.

Thanks, Ann.