The Advent Overview

When my family or friends get in the car to go somewhere, it’s a given that I will be the driver. I don’t know when this became the standard arrangement, not do I believe it was ever formally decided. But when we recently made a familiar five-minute drive to a friend’s place, my father was driving, and I was shocked at what I saw when my eyes had time to linger. I took in the sight of buildings, gardens, trees, and street signs as through I had never seen them before – even though they had all been before my eyes for years.

Perhaps this is something like our experience of the seasons of our faith, especially the journey through Advent and Christmas: we have annual traditions and recipes, we hear the same stories in the Scriptures that we’ve heard a thousand times before, we see the idyllic Nativity scenes with all the familiar faces present around baby Jesus. But do we really see the beauty, the mystery, the reality of God’s love present before us? Do we hear the call, the Good News, the invitation to let Christ be born in us?

The goal with our LRP 2020 Advent resources is to make a meaningful journey through Advent and Christmas. Perhaps it’s a journey we’ve made many times before, but this time, let’s take our time. Let’s take in the sights and sounds of this season, notice the details and mysteries that have been lost to familiarity, and remember the depth and reality of love that lies before our every eyes.

Hidden in the familiar places our journey will take us, we will find something real, something new, something extraordinarily unfamiliar.

Advent 2020: The First Week of Advent

Seeing Things Familiar

As the season of Advent begins, our journey leads us to a word most have heard before – Maranatha. It takes its origin from the Aramaic language, and put simply, it’s an invocation that means “Come, Lord Jesus”

Unfamiliar Again

Perhaps the idea of this simple prayer – Come, Lord Jesus – is familiar to us during Advent when we are waiting for and preparing for precisely this: the coming of Christ to dwell among us and in us. But do we know what we’re actually asking for? Do we know who Jesus really is? If our answer is anything other than “no,” then we’re probably become a little too comfortable with the idea of who he really is. The fullness of God, who is love, incarnate in human form, is a mystery so deep that it cannot be exhausted. Its implications in our very lives are so vast thar we struggle to even imagine life without the meaning it bestows. When we pray Maranatha, are we asking merely for the idea of Jesus that we’re comfortable with to come and occupy some nostalgic corner of our minds?  Are we asking for a repeat of something we’ve asked for in the past? Or are we truly asking for Jesus, the living and true God, to come and be born in us so that his will might be done?

Read

Mark 13: 33 – 37

Reflect

• What’s your earliest memory of Advent? What Advent traditions do you currently celebrate to remember from the past? 
• What’s different about your life and circumstance this year than in years past? Where in your life is Jesus in relation to these differences? Where have you welcomed him to come?
• What do you hope for this Advent?

Pray

Simplify the words of your prayer to that single phrase, Come Lord Jesus. Spend several minutes giving some space and repeating it again. In those spaces, allow Jesus to show you who he is and where he really wants to dwell in your life.