Time skips ahead, seemingly ever faster, but God remains the same. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow - forever.
He has presented himself to us in different forms:
the judging God of Israel, the burning fire,
the babe born into this world, helpless as any one of us,
the man who saw beyond what the world sees, and who loved us so much that he gave his life up so that we might live,
the gentle spirit the lives inside us, the unquenchable flame.
But the are all one and the same, the same God, the same loving presence, the same burning fire.
So often we are busy trying to reach the goal, reach the end of something, finish up and be complete, but God never finishes, he never stops, like time itself.
Through the busy-ness we often struggle to just stop, to simply pause and BE, to rest in Him who is forever unchanging. He does not try to rush us, he simply invites us to rest and dwell in him, to lay down our burdens and be.
In this season of advent we are so busy looking forward to Christmas, rushing around getting everything ready, but maybe we need to pause for a while and think.
The world was not ready for Christ's coming, Mary and Joseph did not have a place prepared for him when he was born - they themselves were staying in a stable, and so they made do with what was around. Christ/God did not complain, he came to serve us, not to be served.
So why rush? The most important thing to get ready is our hearts. Prepare a place for him in our minds. God will work with the rest, whatever state it might be in. No decorations were hung for his birth, no feast was laid out in celebration. But he was welcomed into loving arms, into a world who needed him though they did not know it.
Our world still needs him. Him. Not the decorations and the feast, not the presents and the music. Just him.
Where are you centring your focus during this Advent, this build up to God-with-us Emmanuel?
Will you forget the world's way of celebrating for a few moments with me, and remember that Christ came with nothing prepared, yet He was still able?
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