Advent: A Season of Preparation and Arrival
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“For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders.”
Isaiah 9:6
Advent can be one of those “churchy” words that gets thrown around. Just for kicks, I looked up the word advent on google, and this is the definition I got:
Advent: the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.
That perfectly sums it up! Advent as a general term could be as simple as the advent of your favorite TV series. But when we talk about being in the season of Advent, we are awaiting the arrival of the Messiah. We are preparing for the coming of Jesus. Understandably so, Advent is the season that comes directly before Christmas.
Christmas can cause us to get excited and maybe even a little bit stressed as we think about Christmas music, gifts to buy, decorations, even school work due after break. It is so easy to slip into a consumerism mindset – one of buying, needing, running as fast as we can through the weeks leading up to Christmas. So, with that picture in mind, I invite you to slow down, breathe, and quiet your mind as we take the time to process advent and how we can be preparing for the arrival of our Messiah.
Take the first Christmas. We often think of joyful, glorious bliss and the wonder of God coming to earth in the form of a baby to save us. The ultimate rescue plan perfectly carried out.
Let me play for a bit with the idea that it may not have been as glamorous and blissful as we may think. Maybe, just maybe, it involved turning the life of a young girl upside down, pain and sadness piercing the heart of our heavenly Father, and the suffering of a perfect man. By knowing these tougher sides of the Christmas story, it makes the joy that we can have so much more genuine because it is a response of our gratitude.
Submission.
Mary was a teenage girl, engaged to a man, and had her whole life ahead of her when an angel came to her and told her she would become pregnant. Whoa, hold up. She wasn’t even married! What would she say to her family? What would she say to her fiancé? No one would understand even if she tried! And what she thought her life would be like…it would be no more.
God chose Mary to bear his son, and what a gift that was. But what a need for submission on Mary’s end; a need to submit to God her plans for what she thought life would be like and trust his sovereignty. Submitting can be hard sometimes, but Mary willingly did exactly that.
Suffering.
Jesus came to this earth to serve, not to be served. He came to suffer so that we could have life. That suffering started from the first moment he entered the world. His first smells were those of animals, straw, and sweat, not oils or incense that would have surrounded an earthly king in a palace.
He suffered through humbling circumstances when he breathed his first in a smelly stable to when he breathed his last, hanging naked on a cross. Jesus lived in suffering that he didn’t deserve so that we could have life that we didn’t deserve.
Sacrifice.
Think about God sending his Son to the earth as a baby. His ONLY Son. He sent his Son so that he could save the very people who would reject him, hurt him, kill him. We were in no way deserving this gift that God chose to give us, but he gave it anyway.
If we can realize the immensity of this sacrifice given, the pain and sadness and separation it created between God and his Son, and the mercy that we so desperately needed that God willingly gave, only then can we experience the true joy of the coming of Jesus.
Now what?
Now that we’ve processed through these aspects of Advent, how do we continue to prepare our hearts and minds for Christmas? It is so easy to get caught up in the business of the season and forget to slow down and let God dwell in our hearts. I’ve come up with a brief list of tangible ways that you can slow down this Christmas season.
Create time and space. Life won’t slow down on its own, so you must intentionally create time and space to contemplate and meditate on what God has done for you this season.
Read an Advent devotional. This has been something that has changed the way I do advent. It sets my mind on certain parts of the Christmas story and prophecies that aid in preparing my heart for the coming of Jesus. Two of my faves are the She Reads Truth Advent Devotional and “Oh Come Let Us Adore Him,” by Paul David Tripp.
Dive into the Bible. Even more than an advent devotional, the Bible is the absolute best place to go for the story of the Messiah! Many people struggle reading the bible because they don’t know where to start, so I’ve created a list of scripture references for you to dive into during these last few days before Christmas. I encourage you to read them no matter how busy this season is for you!
Prophecies: Zechariah 9:9-10; Isaiah 9:2-7, Micah 5:2-5; Isaiah 11:1-6
Gospel: Luke 2; John 1:9-14; Hebrews 10:1-14
These are a few of many places in scripture that point directly to the hope that we have through the promise of Jesus, through the birth of our Savior in a smelly stable so long ago.
Friend, I encourage you to close your eyes, breathe, and lean into what God has done for you this Christmas. May you recognize the gift given to you, and how precious you are in the sight of the Almighty God. May you experience peace, joy, and unconditional love this Christmas season that come only from the one who can truly give it – God, our Everlasting Father.
Annie Militzer
Hi! I’m Annie, and I am a Midwest native who recently moved to Orange County with my husband, Josiah. I am on staff with Orange County FCA and have a passion for Jesus, athletes, and anything outdoors. You’ll often find me outside enjoying God’s creation or sipping on coffee in any local coffee shop. I love building relationships with athletes and doing life with them as they seek to follow the Lord in the sport that they love.