House Cleaning

Advent starts on Sunday, so what will you do differently starting

Sunday for the next four weeks until Christmas? Shopping and going

crazy are not acceptable answers! Advent is a time of preparation

for the birth of Christ. I used the metaphor of cleaning house in my

sermon this past week to describe what Advent is like. When a

special guest is coming to your house you usually work at making

things ready. You want everything to be extra clean and

organized. You might even attempt to finish a project or two that

have long gone undone. So how much more should you want to get your

house cleaned and ready for the coming of Christ?

Of course, Jesus is not coming in the flesh to your house...or at

least I'm not promising that! But every Advent is a time to prepare

ourselves to receive Christ anew in our hearts. So we have a

prescribed period of time to prepare our inner selves for the blessed

event. That time is marked by the four Sundays preceding Christmas

(not counting Christmas day, which is this year on a Sunday). That

means that you have a couple of days left to decide what discipline

you could adopt to do a month's worth of internal "house cleaning."

If you think this sounds a bit like Lent, then you are

correct. Historically, Advent was seen more as a time of fasting

than feasting, designed to prepare us for the great feast of

Christmas, just as Lent prepares us for the great feast of

Easter. But you Advent discipline doesn't need to be

painful. Perhaps we all should take stock of our lives and take some

time each day to change our ways, one item at a time. In fact, just

slowing down enough to take some time to reflect on your life in the

presence of God sounds like a pretty good choice for an Advent

discipline. A structure for a daily discipline could be setting a

specific time each day to pray for a set period of time. Daily

reading a scripture and/or a devotional is another traditional way of

marking Advent. Perhaps you might decide that starting that new

exercise program you planned on doing in the new year would be better

started now as a spiritual discipline during Advent.