I think there is one reason for my preferences: hope. Yes, I love carols and gifts and FAMILY, just as much as the next person. But I am so wretched that getting an opportunity to actively wait for the arrival of my salvation each year makes me shed more than a single tear. To contemplate the wonder of God becoming a human to suffer an excruciating death and then raise again, well, that could take me all of eternity to contemplate.
It's currently rainy and windy from Hurricane Dorian (9/6/19) in Southeastern Virginia which seems the perfect unofficial way to begin this journey of active waiting on the newborn King. We are all so full of pain and hurt. Some of us would claim that that's not the case, but, in my short 24 years, I've never met a person who wasn't nursing some type, some degree of a wound. Wretched men that we are! Who will save us from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (ref. Romans 7:24, 25).
One of my favorite, if not my favorite passage of Scripture, is Luke 7:36-50-the story of the woman of the streets (my favorite name for her since an old mentor called me a woman of the streets once as an insult... solidarity, y'all) anointing Jesus' feet and washing them with her tears and hair. Her heart was prepared to meet Jesus, clearly, because of her actions towards him. They were right.
Lord, help me await your Advent actively. Prepare my heart to meet you with my costliest spikenard in an alabaster jar, all I have to give.
Love,
Anna
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