Making space
As we enter Advent and Christmas, I have been pondering making space for God. To make or create space is to act with intent and rearrange the routine of life to be with God and enter this new season of waiting, preparing and hoping.
People do this in many ways. Some purchase or make Advent calendars and open the small windows as a ritual to mark and count the days until Christmas dawns. Others seek to make or purchase special gifts that give again, gifts that support people in need locally and throughout the world. The tradition of giving to the Christmas Bowl makes space for the good news of Christmas to bring practical help to many people in need of work, food, shelter, and medical aid.
Some of us make space for visitors or we prepare to visit other family and friends as school and work end and holiday time comes. Many of our folk have been creating home made Christmas cards for family and friends. In these ways, we make space for our family and friends. And many bring out their nativity sets and Christmas decorations.
Yet there are deeper invitations to make space for God to meet us afresh. When we sing and explore the Advent themes of hope, peace, joy, and love, how might our praying be a way of making space.
One of our Christmas hymns “O little town of Bethlehem‟ has these lines in verse 3:
How silently, how silently
The wondrous Gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming;
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still
The dear Christ enters in.
What might this mean to enter and experience the silence that is prayer without words and seeks to makes space for Christ to enter in?
And in the final verse, the words are “O Holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today”. What might these words say to us this year, when in Bethlehem and Gaza cries of fear are heard as violence and destruction affects so many? Can the good news of the birth of the Christ child still be born anew in people’s hearts today?
The holy child Jesus, whose name means the Lord will save and God with us, helps us contemplate that even in the brokenness and sin in the world, where inhumanity and violence harm the innocent we can’t make room for a contrary word of peace and goodwill to all. In faith, we hear the call to trust God whatever the circumstances, for “the Lord is near‟ and to those who prepare in their hearts and lives, a space, a welcome, a home, is found for the little ones of this world.
The first chapter of John’s gospel records that Jesus came to his own and to those who received or welcomed him, they would be called God’s children and be co-heirs with God. To make space for and with God is to share this relationship, to be addressing God as part of a wider family.
Let us make space this Advent and Christmas and let it be sacred space, opportunity to meet the God who takes us beyond ourselves into the mystery of a child born who will reveal life beyond death and love stronger than hate. May the space you experience with God also offer you what the opening words of another hymn Together in Song 690 says, “Beauty for brokenness and hope for despair‟.
A Blessed Christmas to all.
Rev Lynette Dungan