As I walked with the Lord one morning, I felt an excitement considering the coming Advent season.
God reminded me that while Advent is restful in one sense, it is also a season of preparation. I asked God what he meant by preparation, what am I meant to be preparing for? How am I to prepare for Christ?
Out of those questions, an Advent devotional was born. God got real serious with me on that walk. My weariness reminded me of the groaning we all feel when we pause to sense the undercurrent of the Holy Spirit’s longing for wholeness not only in us, but for all creation. The political, global, and relational turmoil I sense when I watch the news, engage in my community, and pray has been quite overwhelming in the past few years and made me realize that as Christians we need to be prepared for what the Lord is doing. We need eyes to see and ears to hear what the Spirit is communicating and I believe Advent is the season in which we are gifted a time to purposely prepare for the wedding of all time.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.
Revelation 19:7 (NIV)
It gets easily forgotten that Advent is not just about preparing for the birth of Christ, it is also rooted in a rich eschatological understanding of the arrival of Christ. The earth has received Christ the Son of God and Man, which we remember in celebration on Christmas, but we live in the current reality with the Spirit, Christ in us, in the not yet. We continue to await Christ the King as we exist in the age of the Church. We live in a time of continued waiting, longing, and preparing the Kingdom of Earth for Christ’s second coming, the Kingdom of Heaven.
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
Revelation 21:1-3 (NIV)
Each week in Advent I will post a reflection on preparing ourselves for the coming bridegroom.
For more please see the full article at Global Trellis and get a downloadable prayer devotional for each week in Advent.
