December 21

Final Preparations.

Inevitably you have been asked, or will be asked...or perhaps have asked the question of the season:  "Are you ready for Christmas?"  It usually insinuates...have you bought all the gifts you need to buy, is your house ready for guests, do you have food in the fridge and baking in the freezer...something like that.  I was reminded today that the early church did not celebrate Christmas, but rather celebrated Epiphany, the start of Jesus' public ministry.  In that case, John the baptist came along as "A voice of one crying out in the wilderness:  Make straight the way of the Lord--Just as Isaiah the prophet said."  John 1:23.  He's not talking about paving roads, but getting our lives ready to meet our Maker.  In essence he was calling out to the crowds--are you ready to meet the Messiah?  Are you ready for what he is about to say and do?  Are you ready to serve him as your king?  Steve Bell wrote in an advent song, 'Ready my heart for the birth of Emmanuel', echoing what John is asking the people to do.  Get ready!  Some of us are going into the weekend about to run ragged from children's activities, family events, last minute shopping and church events...all good, but these are not the means by which we get ourselves ready for the Lord.  My son lamented the other day that he does not feel the Christmas spirit (he's only 9!), somehow we and the world have convinced him that he should feel a certain mood to experience Christmas and get the most out of it.  But John the baptist is not after a mood, but rather a heart attitude--a recognition that at the coming of Jesus we are in the presence of the divine, listen to his view of Jesus, "He is the One coming after me, whose sandal strap I'm not worthy to untie."  John 1:27.  If you are after a mood today you'll get disappointed as easily as your hot chocolate gets cold.  The hearts that Jesus came to were the ones ready in humility, ready to receive Jesus as Lord, master and maker.  The ones who humbly asked for help and forgiveness, for mercy and for wisdom, the ones who recognized their brokenness.  But the ones who spent their lives preparing the outside of their lives were the ones who did not recognize him when he came, they spent their lives worrying about the periphery stuff (how they look in public, religious duties, following laws instead of loving people) and in the end, these were the ones who had Jesus crucified.   But who does the Son of God come to:  the humble, the lowly who recognize their need of him, and these were the ones He was willing to call children, even friends:  John 1:10-13 "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."  Lets get ready for sure, but lets get ready by receiving him, by making straight roads in our lives through obedience, confession and even repentance.  These are the marks of the season, far more eternal than tinsel and gingerbread.