Chardon United Methodist Church

You and I both say it every November: "The store's Christmas stuff really came out early this year!"  And it does seem to happen earlier and earlier each year.  There are, of course, very practical reasons for this.  A major one - this year, especially, with the prospects for the retailing business to be the darkest in decades - is to give stores more days to make sales.  Apart from the obvious commercialism of this, however, is another basic reason for the early appearance of Christmas: the stores clean out the pumpkins and pilgrims to make room for the sleighs and Santas.  That is, without setting aside some things, there won't be room for the other things.

It's not a bad idea.  It is not a bad idea to pack up and put what is past and over away so there can be room for what is new.  It is, in fact, a good and essential idea for us to claim as our own.

Particularly in Advent (beginning this year on November 30) it is a good and essential idea for us to claim as our own.  Advent means 'coming', and we cannot have room for that which comes - and the One who comes as Lord of all life - without packing up and putting away what is past and over.  This is why, as the Christmas carol proclaims, we 'prepare to make Him room'.

What preparations, then, do we need to make -- as a church and as individuals?  What is in the way, taking up space and getting in the way, of the new thing God in Christ is ready to bring to us in His coming?  Old hurts?  Disappointments?  Unfulfilled dreams or expectations?

Let the inventory-taking and packing away be ours to do!  All of us need - and long! - to make room in our lives for something new to be born within us.  For this, it can't come soon enough!

Advent Blessings,
Henry