Preparing a Space
…The season of Advent is a season of preparation, a time of getting ready for what lies ahead. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says of John the Baptist, “This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ ’’ And in another Advent reading, Isaiah proclaims to us, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Isaiah 40:3). While both Matthew and Isaiah draw our attention to the horizon from which the holy one will appear, they also draw our gaze to the path itself.
The season beckons me to ask, what am I preparing for? What is the way that is being prepared within the wilderness of my life? What does it mean for my own life to become a path, a way of welcome for the Holy One? How do I give myself time to notice the ways that the path unfolds before me and within me? What are the acts of preparation that bring delight to my life? Whom do I ask or allow to help me prepare?
Chances are, if we don’t enjoy the process of getting ready, we won’t enjoy the event we are getting ready for. If we become so consumed by getting Christmas right—the right present, the right cards mailed to the right people at the right time, the right dishes for Christmas dinner—we risk missing the surprising ways that God prepares us in this season. As we open to God’s guiding in these Advent days, we may discover that the space being prepared for the coming birth lies within our own selves.
Jan L.Richardson, NIGHT VISIONS: searching the shadows of advent and christmas,
