Preparing
19th December 2019
The third part of our walk through Advent begins with three voices…
I am Mary. My time is closer now, I feel the movement within me. Like countless mothers before me I feel the need to prepare, to clear out, to make ready, full of energy: they call it the nesting impulse. The Psalmist speaks for me; ‘How great is your goodness which you have prepared for those who love you’.
I am Isaiah and I speak for all those who have been waiting and hoping for change: all those who have been overlooked, downtrodden, forgotten. Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’
I am John the Baptist. And long years after, I repeated those words: ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord’ as I called people to the waters of change. Who will listen? Who will come? Who will dare? What needs to change in your life? What will you leave behind to make room for God?
Hearing a challenge like this, with Christmas in less than a week, may feel a bit much. We may be already caught up in the preparing for Christmas madness – the food planning and shopping, last minute presents and cards, getting ready for visitors or travelling – not to mention things to finish at work or in our studies. And now on top of all of this, we’re meant to prepare spiritually as well? Or feel guilty if we don’t.
Stephen Cottrell, the newly appointed next Archbishop of York, wrote a little book a few years ago called ‘Do nothing – Christmas is coming’. I wonder whether others in his family, possibly those keeping the whole show on the road, smiled a wry smile. It would lovely just to drop it all, but it might not be that easy.
But maybe there is a small shift that we can make. Our Advent email guru, Brian Draper, talked a few days ago about how in music what’s important is not just the notes, but the space between the notes. Without the space the notes would be just one indigestible wall of sound. It’s the same when we pick up a book – it’s the space that lets the words speak. In the poetry books that I love, there is more space and fewer words – but often the words say more.
So maybe there is a way to leave just a little bit of space between the things we have to do. To take a breath between our different activities. As we open each card, or write each card, or send each Christmas email – to stop and mindfully bring this person to mind just for a moment, and hold them before God’s loving gaze. As we shop and plan and prepare the food we may be sharing, to bring to mind those we will be sharing this with, and hold them in prayer and thankfulness – and maybe even to do the same thing when we are washing up.
Maybe there will be some times when we can allow ourselves a few minutes to gaze out of the window, or step outside – and drink in the wonder of the sky, the birds, the moon, the rain… Maybe in all the Christmas din we can take two or three minutes to listen to one carol with all our attention – allowing the music to sink into our soul.
And maybe we will also be given the unwanted gift of being forced to wait – in a queue at the post office, in a traffic jam… and find in those moments the freedom of a few minutes space. We could perhaps be aware, in our enforced waiting, of the companionship of Mary, coming towards the end of her nine months of waiting. What may be preparing to come to birth in our lives?
You might want to take a few moments to breathe now – to allow God to do his work in preparing you for all that will be coming in the next couple of weeks – and to become more open to receive his most precious gift to us…
We offer to God the spaces of our lives, however small, that they may be doorways to prepare our hearts to meet him…
We offer to God all that we would clear out, simplify and leave behind, to prepare our hearts to meet him…
We offer to God all that we would become, our energy, our imagination, to prepare our hearts to meet him…
God of constancy and change, help us to recognize where we have become stuck in the busy patterns of our familiar lives.
Lead us into the unforced rhythms of grace where we can know eternity in every breath.
Prepare your way in us, that we might welcome your Son, Jesus, the child who is to come. Amen.