Wednesday, November 27, 2019 – Advent One
“Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” (Luke 1: 28, New Living Translation) 

                My, how time flies! Where has the year gone? 

I can’t ignore the Christmas ads on TV any more. Christmas is looking at me straight in the face. This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. Thank goodness I have left our outdoor Christmas lights all year on the big fir tree growing on our front lawn. It’s grown quite some more; maybe I should add a few more lights too.

‘Tis the season – here it comes ready or not.

I get a lot less stressed out about this festive season than I used to, before retirement. But I still have some of my mother in me, it seems. Mom would start to worry about which of her three children were going to “have her for Christmas”, usually way too early for any of us really to be thinking about it – like in August. She always told us that she wanted to book her train ticket early. We loved having her at our home over Christmas but she was pretty persistent that each of us take turns and was pretty sure whose turn it was. But she liked to have that “invitation” firmly established in the hearts and minds of her children very early, long before the Christmas season was even a glint in Santa’s eye.

But I am discovering that I, too, like to know the details of our family Christmas plans, whatever they may be, just not quite so early as my mother. I am fairly comfortable as to what the family decides. Just tell me where I am driving to and when. I have no particular Christmas agenda about what, where and with whom but, in part, I want to make sure everybody is covered when it comes to our Christmas celebrations. With our growing families it is becoming harder to guarantee that we all will be able to get together on Christmas Day like before. But I don’t want anyone left behind or left out. I also know this worry is kind of stupid because that is not how our family rolls. Thanks, Mom!

But perhaps, Advent needs a little more of the unpredictable as much as we would like to tie it down to fit our calendars and schedules.  As we unpack the same Christmas tree decorations we have used for years, or bake the same favourite Christmas cookies or light the inevitable Advent candles at church and recall the familiar themes of hope, peace, joy and love, perhaps we could use a healthy dose of mystery, serendipity and surprising grace.

After all, Mary wasn’t just sitting around the house expecting an angel to come visit her and tell her she was to become the mother of the saviour of all humanity.  I am fairly sure that she was gob-smacked by the unlikely and sudden change in her life. Or better yet, God-smacked. There were more questions than answers at this point in the Advent Story. She couldn’t practice her part in this first Christmas pageant. She needed to take it as it unfolded. There were no trains to Bethlehem to buy tickets for.

A life of faith is not always predictable and therefore not always safe and sound as we might hope.  Having God’s favour was going to be a challenge for Mary. It would be demanding of her. It would take her on a totally different life-path than the one she was expecting – settling down with her husband Joseph, raising a family and living a quiet, anonymous life in Nazareth.

Advent is meant to shake us up, sometimes. Advent is meant to alert us to the incredible, the utterly new, the dynamic awesome sovereignty and love of God.  God’s love and grace take us by surprise. You can’t really make arrangements or make plans or book your rooms well ahead in Bethlehem.

Sometimes, God’s favour just leaves one God-smacked.  

Dale