I don’t want to rush the Advent season, but
I am certainly in a rush! Now, let’s be
honest… How often do we read
Haggai? Wait for it… That’s what I thought. Today is an excellent day to do so:
Haggai
1:5-9, “Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful
thought to your ways. You have planted much, but harvested little.
You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on
clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with
holes in it. This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber
and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,’ says the
Lord. ‘You
expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I
blew away. Why?’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘Because
of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own
house…
It sounds like a twisted Advent version of the Big, Bad,
Wolf, but then something odd happens. The
people respond, and the Lord says the most beautiful words of all…
“I am
with you,” (v.13)
We are these people. We are these people who run and rush and
forget to give careful thought to our ways.
I’m not sure this is particularly horrible in any specific sense, but it
is, indeed, distracting. It distracts us
from what really matters, and that never ends well.
I need to confess. I love this season so much that I try to cram
in every possible beautiful tradition, every single year. In many ways, this is life giving to me, so
it’s not all bad. The other night, when
our family sat down to watch one of the Christmas movies we watch every year,
my thirteen year old son was suddenly struck by the realization that not all
families have this tradition. His eyes
got huge, and he didn’t speak for a moment.
It is truly unthinkable to him that not every mom insists that her
children watch every Christmas movie she can get her hands on, from classics to
pre-school TV specials (even though they are way too old) to glossy new
titles. He was so sad when this dawned
on him.
In addition, I have made this list of
things that have to happen from day
to day, during Advent. I have been
stressed out about a few of them, this year, because I can’t keep up, and some
of them are not happening (or, at
least, not happening yet…)
There should be a different Christmas book
to read every night… and an Advent calendar (only Lego will do). The Advent wreath must be lit from week to
week, with recitations and prayers. We
also celebrate Hanukkah at our home, so consideration must be given to the
menorah and the Hebrew blessings and Hanukkah books and new family games and
fried food and chocolate coins (I’m thinking about this in great detail, right
now, since it is actually
Hanukkah). We have a Christmas Eve tradition
that includes new pajamas and a family movie night, and the truth is that part
of the reason for this is a deep desire for the kids to sleep in past 12:01am,
because at some point in our lives I told them it was OK to wake us any time after midnight on Christmas
Day, and they will never forget it! This
is problematic when the presents aren’t yet wrapped! This is oh so problematic in years such as
this one, when Christmas Eve (or Christmas Day) falls on a Sunday and somebody’s
on staff at a church…
As if all of this isn’t enough, we added
some Epiphany traditions a couple of years ago, and I am excited to announce
that this has expanded to a new twelve days of Christmas thing we’re going to
try for the first time, this year.
I shared my fantastical list of
Advent/Hanukkah/Christmas/Epiphany awesomeness with my husband the other day,
and when he got to the end of it, he said, “What are we doing for Jesus?”
That sounds overtly spiritual, but what he
really meant was that I had forgotten to put Jesus’ birthday dessert on my
list! (Jesus used to get a cake, but for
the past decade we have had a kid with a 12/26 birthday, so now Jesus usually
gets brownies or cheesecake).
Still, I had a very small meltdown, as I
exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! I forgot Jesus!”
The reading of the nativity story (which
happens every year whether it’s on a list or not) and Jesus’ birthday dessert
are now on the list. Don’t worry. I have it all under control.
And yet I think I feel a little bit like
the Jewish people of the book of Haggai.
I expect so much… It amounts to
so little without the right ways…
Psalm
31:24: “Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.”
Oh, that Jesus would come… that Jesus would
be with me… that Jesus would be with us…
We are waiting…
L.
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