Monday Morning After
November 28, 2011
It has been an unusually mild Thanksgiving weekend this year. Actually, it has been one of those years when you have had time to get ready for winter.
My snow thrower is ready and waiting. My lawn mower is in the basement and the shovels are up from the basement. I’ve had time to clean my gutters, rake the leaves, and seal my driveway. We set up the Christmas tree, hung the wreath outside, and tomorrow I will be getting my first Christmas card. Jay and his family always send a letter so it gets here right after Thanksgiving.
I am ready!
I hope I’m ready. Last year, the snow thrower broke down after the3rd storm. It turned out, I wasn’t ready for that. Last week, our beloved Syracuse basketball assistant coach, Bernie Fine was discovered to be not who he said he was. No one in Syracuse was ready for that, not even his best friends. Health problems? Are you ever really ready to hear your doctor say, “ I think we should do more tests” ?
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I learned I am going to be a grandpa next year. I’ve never been one of those. I know I am not ready for that, but I don’t care. Ready or not, here it comes!
On Sunday, we started Advent, the season for getting ready. Ready for the celebration of the birth of Christ. Ready for his Second Coming at some unknown day in the future. We looked at Mary. Eugene Peterson translates the Angel’s message to Mary this way: “God has a surprise for you…” How’s that for an understatement.
Her words were simple and honest: “I’m the Lord’s maid, ready to serve. Let it be with me just as you say.” I like to think she lived in the present, ready for what is happening now. She wondered about the past, how she got there; and she was anxious about the future, but she set those aside and basically said: “I am ready”.
Are you ready…for whatever God may bring? He brings an offer at Christmas to be “with you”. It is the season to invite him into your life or to renew the invitation again. You may not have all the answers. Faith is a step into the unknown. You can never be really ready. Can you at least be ready for today… now… not the past which can’t be changed; nor the future, which is too big to get your arms around? Christmas is coming. You have time to begin and relive that faith this Christmas. Not rushing or regretting, just living with God today. It is enough just to be ready for that.
