Prepare the way
As we enter Advent, Christmas, we can “prepare the Way of the Lord.” Each year this impetus invites us to engage and meditate on God with us, in the past, the present and the future.
On thinking about “preparing the way” I was reminded of a story from my youth told by a local UCA minister Rev Dr Arthur Jackson. He said there were once two groups of women, fishermen’s wives, waiting for their partners to return after a stormy night at sea. One group was standing out at the edge of the jetty looking out to the sea for a sign of their partners’ boats coming home. They were anxious, fearful, wet, and cold and their prayer was fervent asking God for their partners’ safe and quick return. A second group of women were at home, warm and sheltered, preparing a meal and ready for their fisherfolk partners’ arrival home at any time of the day or night. The question was then ‘Which are you in the story?’ This story, like a parable, invites the hearers to consider what their posture might be when waiting and preparing for God or their loved ones to come to them.
In this Holy season we prepare again for Christ’s coming at Christmas. Like the first group of women, we might at times, be a bit fearful
or anxious. Moreover, as we look at what is happening in our world and lives, we might as one of our hymns “Inspired by love and anger”
by John Bell says “crave an all-controlling force” to make things as we would like them to be. Yet as the hymn continues, we find instead “a
child in weakness born” as Jesus the Christ entered our troubled world. Or we might be more like the second group of women who are at home going about their daily tasks of living faithfully, prepared to encounter others in a more trusting calmer way knowing their task is to be prepared to welcome and serve whatever happens. And we might find ourselves experiencing both these postures, sometimes anxious and fearful and at other times, calmer and active preparing the way of the Lord in daily acts of hospitality and care.
The continuing promises of God come to us afresh each Advent and Christmas in the sacred stories of Christ coming again, as the Word
made flesh in a vulnerable birth of a child into a troubled world, in the messages of the prophets, and the call to follow and welcome
the Christ as Immanuel God with us in our daily lives.
As you prepare for whatever Advent and Christmas brings, may the message of angels in Luke’s gospel, peace, and goodwill, lift your spirits, even when the world looks dark and stormy. The light of Christ still shines, so let us prepare the way of the Lord to show God’s
love and welcome.
Rev Dr Lynette Dungan