Proverbs 18:15-16 - "An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. A man's gift makes room for him and brings him before the great."
Well, I think it's safe to say that almost every single one of us has made room for something extra this Thanksgiving weekend.
I myself had a great time making room for my daughters to be home from college. I made room for overnight guests from Korea. I made room for an Open House for our church family and anyone else who wondered what all the people were about. I made room for lots of turkey. I made room for a couple movies. I made room to make six and a half hours of phone calls to people in our church and community who are both in town and out of town. I'm making room to help my son build a harmless (translation bladeless) guillotine for extra credit in his freshmen history class. I made room to help park thousands of cars for hours and for the Alabama high school state semifinal thriller football game that all those people were coming to see. And, in addition to lots of other things, I made room for some of the best pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and carrot cake that I've eaten since the last time I ate pumpkin pie because I'm sure that it was made by the same person!
Yet with all these truly wonderful things for which we've all made room, I pray that we'll acknowledge the season of Advent that starts tomorrow, Sunday, December 1. "Advent," which means "coming," is a season to prepare. Yes, it's a season to prepare for Christmas. But as "Christmas" means "Christ sent for fellowship with us," Advent is a season to make room not so much for Christmas as a worldly material cultural event but instead to make room for Jesus Christ himself.
As Pastor Scott and I start a sermon series on "The Art of Neighboring," we're being challenged to call people to recognize that making room for Jesus Christ usually means making room for more than what you planned. Christ shines through us when we plan for one person, but two show up, and we make room for two. Christ shines when we plan for people to stay for four hours, but they stay for more, and we make room in our day for people to stay longer, especially if the only thing competing with their hunger for fellowship is, well, watching a football game or running to grab some more of that awesome pumpkin pie.
Think about it!
May God grant us a great Advent as God makes room in our heart for more than we had planned!
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
No comments:
Post a Comment