“Advent Perspective”

OK, last weekend I had my annual bout with converting to atheism.  This consideration is brought on while putting up our Christmas decorations!  Between the tree in the house and the lights outside, I wondered what I really believed in and why?!?!?!  First the tree.  We have a family tradition of joining our oldest daughter and grandson in cutting down our trees.  That is always a delightful time.  That holiday feeling goes right down the drain in getting it in the stand, straight, and secure.  Being a “bit” obsessive compulsive, the slightest degree away from vertical will set me off.  So while I am attempting to screw those three bolts into the tree, I am convinced that my wife, who is holding the top STEADY, moved it off center, I just know it.  The three guide wires finally helped!

Then comes the outdoor lights.  After regretting that I didn’t pack them better last Christmas, I spend an hour untangling 500 yards of lights.  This was followed by several trips to WalMart to purchase new lights because the ones I purchased last year either don’t work or even worse, half work.  After that trek, I go back because the box I just bought doesn’t work!  Four hours later, I plop down in my chair and wonder why decking the halls with boughs of holly wasn’t enough. And all the while nice smooth jazz Christmas music is being played to soothe this savage beast.   Does Clark Griswold’s name ring a bell?  Bring on the wassail, and plenty of it!

All this to say that, through this adventure in decorating, I realized how quickly our circumstances rob us of our joy in Christ.  My sense of the season, my joy in the journey, and my delight in the details were quickly erased by the troubles with “things”.  My advent perspective had been spoiled by the little inconveniences and difficulties that are meant to be visual reminders and representations of that perspective . . . how sad a creature I am!

Thank God the next day was Sunday.  It “just so happened” that the sermon was about “HOPE” and the Old Testament reading was from Deuteronomy 11, where Moses reminds the people of Israel that, “The land you are entering is not like the land you came from . . . it is a land the Lord your God cares for; his eyes are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end”. It was then that it hit me ~ we worship a God of hope, The God Who has gone before us, in His sovereignty, in His purpose, in His eternal plan, and through His Son.  Where we are headed is not like where we came from, we are moving through a lot of “stuff” toward an eternal home that God’s eyes are continually on.  While we may wonder as we wander through this life, and wish for better and easier days,  we can rest assured that our God still has our best interest in His steady gaze upon what lies ahead.  For the joy set before him Christ endured the cross.  I guess I can certainly endure the decorating because of that same joy.   Interesting that Moses states that God’s gaze is “from the beginning of the year to its end”.   That includes all my days, all the days of 2009, and all the days of coming years.  WOW, I can’t think of anything else in this world that offers that kind of guarantee!  That sounds like hope to me.

So for all those reading this, that have identified with my travail in a morbidly humorous way, take heart!  All that time with all those !#*%^$! decorations actually means something far more than we realize in the doing.  Each Advent is a reminder that He once came, came to bring salvation to us through his life, death & resurrection.  The hope that Moses and the prophets foretold, came to pass.  That hope, FOR us, is Christ IN us, the hope of glory, and we live in that hope now.  So each Advent is also a looking forward, forward to the day when Christ comes the second time.  What a day of rejoicing that will be!  Makes all those decorations seem small in comparison, yet they are part of the perspective of hope in a world that desperately needs it, but is looking in the wrong places . . .

Well, I think I’ll go finish my Christmas decorating now that my Advent perspective is right . . . “Falalalala, lala, la, la”

Bill