Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Make ready your heart indeed... God speaks to even the hard of hearing
I had just spoken to my friend about preparation of the heart belonging to man, and how difficult it was to prepare your heart in the midst of all the heavy commitments.. Guess wat came into the mail this morning..
Preparations
Margaret Manning
Preparations are an integral part to Christmas. There are the baking preparations for holiday favorites, attending to holiday decorations and décor, and the anticipation of parties to celebrate the season with family and friends. We prepare our menu for Christmas day, and we shop sometimes beginning early in the fall or late summer searching for gifts and stocking stuffers for all those “wish” lists that come our way. There are preparations for church pageants and concerts and for all the many events that our churches conduct to mark the season. Before we know it, all of our preparations culminate in Christmas day, which comes and goes like a dream.
It is only fitting that this season is filled with preparations. Advent is a season of preparation for the coming of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It is a season in which Christians are called to examine their preparations--namely, the preparation of our hearts and lives in anticipation of the coming of Jesus, first as the babe in the manger, and again as the sovereign King. The gospel of Mark even suggests that preparation is the beginning of the gospel proclamation: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, ‘Behold I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare Your way; The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (Mark 1:1-3). The Advent season bids us to examine our preparations, but not of our decorations, baking, gift purchases, or party-planning.
We are called to examine our hearts and our lives: Are they prepared for the Coming King? John’s message is one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. His was a call to consider the preparation of our lives in light of the coming Messiah and the judgment that would follow. In anticipation of this awesome event “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (Mark 1:4-5). In the same way, as we anticipate Christ’s coming, both in the manger and in his glory, we are called to focus our preparations. How will we use this time and season? What are we really preparing for? Will we be caught up in all the preparations that our world tells us we should be caught up in? Or will we use this time to focus on Who we are preparing for? This is the season to prepare our hearts and ready our lives. Will we make room for the way of the Lord, the way of repentance and confession? Will we make these necessary preparations, even as they run counter to all the preparations we normally consider during this season? The beginning of the gospel message is that we prepare our hearts for the coming King, make ready Christ’s way, and make his paths straight.
Mantou at 10:49 AM