24.12.17

Our ADVENTure: We are ready!

My people are currently snuggled under blankets drinking hot cocoa and intently watching A Christmas Story.  My heart is so full I feel like it's going to burst!  We've celebrated big this Advent season, and we are ready . . . 

It's been a full day of worship, a full weekend.  And tonight as we entered that sanctuary and grabbed a candle, well, I was ready.  It was an incredible time of worship and the balm to a weary soul.

You know, year after year we do the same things in much the same way.  The story . . . it never changes.  It is the same.  All of the familiar faces.  There's Mary and Joseph, angels, shepherds and kings.  There's the manger and the Baby.  And, yet, I find that the celebration, the anticipation only grows with each passing year!  To think that God came near, came to us!  He came because we were so weary, so tired, so lost, dying in sin.  He came to deliver, to redeem, to forgive, to save.

He came.

And, for that very reason, even though it's the same year after year after year after year . . . oh, may we be filled anew with awe and wonder and joy . . . 

Because He came!

It's the greatest story ever told, the grandest birth in all of history . . .

HIS story.

He came.   

I've celebrated MANY Christmases.  It seems that the past few years, my anticipation for the sights and sounds of the Advent season has only intensified, grown.  I'm more excited now that I ever was as a child!  How can that be since it's so familiar, the same story?  How can it be that, year after year, we pull out the same nativity scene, the same costumes and, yet, the story seems so brand new?

It's because EVERY DAY with the Lord Jesus is an ADVENTure.  Every. Day.  Every time I open His Word, it's new and alive and breathing and active.  Every. single. time.  

He came.  

He came to make things new - even the old things, the tired things - and to give abundant life - even out of nothing.  Oh, may we never get over it, no matter how many Christmases we celebrate!