Do you want God to come? To put it in proper perspective, do you really want Christmas to come? Because if Christmas comes God is going to shake things in your life. He is going to open your wound again. He is going to show you your sins, secret and public. He is going to take you through a difficult journey. He is going to reorder your house. He is going to move things around with wild intensity. But I suggest that calling upon him is infinitely better. I suggest that the pain of tearing is infinitely better; His coming is infinitely better than His absence.
As the Prophet Isaiah says:
But now, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Advent is a time for preparing to affirm what Isaiah affirms. If you want a lesson in anthropology, here it is: “God is our Father, we are the clay. So, we pray: Come, Lord, because we have tried to make ourselves into something without you and every time we tried we failed. But if you come to us, you will make something beautiful; you will take those parts of us that are unclean and make clean; you will take your righteousness and make us whole; you will take our bodies and build your palace.
So in this final week of Advent, “Long well. Expect well.” Christmas is coming.
