keeping in step with Advent

I felt a bit unprepared for Advent this year - it seemed to arrive more quickly than usual somehow. Over the past several years I have appreciated using an Advent devotional in preparation for Christmas. I found an excellent one this week on Christianity Today's website - it integrates artwork, Scripture, poems, and other quotes into each day's content. So far I have found it to provide new angles and insights for me as I walk through this season. You can link to it here. (Although Advent technically began this past Sunday, November 29, this calendar is set up for December 1 - 25 - easy to follow!)

The word advent means "coming." We use the word for this time of year because we are celebrating the coming of the Lord - both His first coming in human form as a baby, as well as His second coming, which we still anticipate. My prayer for myself and others is that these days of Advent will bring heightened awareness of the ways in which the Lord has already entered into our lives & situations - as well as be a time of prayer for the places we still long for His redemption to enter.

Grace & peace to each of you at the start of this Advent season . . .

God is coming! God is coming!
All the element we swim in, this existence,
Echoes ahead the advent. God is coming! Can't you feel it?

- Walter Wangerin Jr., "The Signs of the Times" in The Manger Is Empty;
from Day 1 in the CT Advent Calendar