ADVENT IS HERE

Today is the First Sunday of Advent. This is a big deal for an Anglican like me. Being a priest, who is pastor at a church meeting at 4pm on Sunday, this means I have been working all morning because I spent most of last week playing and holiday "ing" in Virginia. I am tempted to think that all this work is distracting me from focusing on Advent and the the true meaning of Christ's coming. But the more I think about it, the more I sam realizing that this is exactly what Advent is about. We Christians believe God became a man. This has innumerable implications, but one of them is that the mundane is holy; the everyday is spiritual.

Trudi is asleep after a few hours of toddler and baby noise. Dylan and Rees are arguing about light sabers and the Disney Channel is blaring in the other room. If God became a man (and I believe he did) then this is just the kind of stuff he lived through and just the kind of stuff that matters. So, did Jesus ever have irate customers come and yell at him about a carpentry project? Did the cous cous (sp?) ever boil over? You get the drift.

I guess one of the lessons of Advent is that the stuff of everyday life is the stuff of God. Makes me think of my favvorite line from a Christmas Carol. "Long lay the world in sin and error pining. 'Til he appeared and the soul felt its worth." God became a man. That means being a human has value -- eternal value. I, you, we really matter in the largest scheme of things. This should be thought about long and hard.

Now back to sermon writing, coffee drinking and preteens fighting.

Happy Advent!