Ready or not....

After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it,
that the remnant of humanity may seek the Lord,
and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord...

                                                                — Acts 15:16-17

It’s time to get ready — pull the tree out (remember where you put it?), dust off all those boxes of ornaments, find the old nativity set and get to work.  For most of us, the season of Advent is time to get busy.  We don’t just sit around waiting for the Christ child — we have things to do.  Run to the store to get the ingredients for those Christmas cookies.  Run the kids to rehearsal for the Christmas program.  Run down that list to find that just-right present for Uncle Albert (I’m sure there’s an app for that).  It’s a season full of preparations — and somewhere in the thick of it all — wrapping presents, receiving guests, decorating, cooking, going to church and  doing the good things we do — then all of a sudden Christmas comes. 

No matter how long the build up, it arrives in an instant.  No matter how long before Thanksgiving the Christmas music started to play on the radio, Christmas gets here before you know it.  It always takes my breath away,  not because the day itself is different from other days, but because it reminds me that on a day just as ordinary as this one God was born.  Under the same deep sky with the same stars looking down on this very planet, a virgin conceived a child named Jesus.  Immanuel, God with us.  Right here.

God had his own preparations to make for that day.  From the moment we stopped living for God and started making life just about us, the Lord got busy.  He began assembling the story, wrapping his greatest gift up in promises which would rain down upon his precious people.  We had turned our backs on his command and sovereignty, but God would come at us with grace.  “Humankind will crush your head,” he told the old serpent, “and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). 

              He sent messengers throughout the ages to tell us that that what was lost would one day be found, what is gone will be regained, what was broken will be re-made.  The prophets shared the promise that David’s fallen tent — the line that once carried the hope of humankind, would be restored.  When our own attempts to set the world right proved utter failures — BEHOLD — “for us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6  God prepared the world for his arrival, bringing hope for a King of Kings, a light not just for David’s people the Jews, but for all people everywhere.

So if your tree looks a little lopsided, if you just couldn’t find the right gift for Uncle Albert, even if the pieces to your old nativity set have cracks in their necks or fingers broken off — however overdone the  Christmas cookies are, just remember there’s some One who’s been preparing for this for 2000 years.  No matter what, he will take us along.  No matter what, we are heading nonstop into a holy mystery, a downhill ride that won’t end until we find ourselves face to face with the miracle of the Word made flesh.

It’s time to get ready, to hear again the story of our sad descent into sin and the radical solution of God’s descent to be with us.  It’s time to prepare our hearts to marvel at the height, width, and depth of his love for us, that he would strip himself of all power to become a baby in a maiden’s arms.  It’s time to stand beneath the starlight and wonder at the moment when this world received the child who was the very one who made this world.  There’s nothing else like Christmas, and it’s on its way.  Are you ready?