Week 3: A Christ-absorbed Advent

This month, we’re reading Preparing for Jesus, an Advent devotional by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

“Prepare” is a word we hear a lot this time of year. We’re preparing for Christmas, preparing our homes, preparing a feast, preparing for company — all kinds of preparations. Somewhere in there we’re also, hopefully, preparing for the coming of Jesus.

Wangerin writes on what it means to prepare by reflecting on John the Baptist, who burst out of the wilderness crying, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” John announces the Advent of Jesus’ public ministry and also a second Advent, the return of Christ which is yet to come.

As John, who cried Prepare to Israel, was the messenger of that first appearing [of Jesus], so John is the messenger now of the reappearing, the Second Coming of Christ!

 

Still, still he cries: Prepare!

 

Are we listening?

 

Do we, who are busy preparing for Christmas, parties and presents and decorations and food and church programs—and visitors—do we prepare with equal fervor for the visitation of the Lord?

 

What sort of Advent is this imminent Advent for you? If you are consumed by one more Christmas (one mere Christmas among two thousand) your Advent is fleeting, time-bound, and likely self-absorbed. Desperate preparations often indicate an anxiety about the opinions of others regarding ourselves. But if your participation in this temporal Advent truly signifies preparations for the final Advent, you are Christ-absorbed.

Read more here.