How is it that the Christmas Season is sneaking up on us once again? Yes, Hobby Lobby started putting up their Christmas decorations in July, and my three-year-old daughter may have asked me to play Jingle Bells in September, but somehow, I still find myself caught off guard and unprepared to enter the Advent season.
Which leaves the weighty question sitting in my stomach: how do I prepare for Advent?
It feels a bit rote, at times. As if there’s no need to prepare, because no matter what, our over-the-top Christmas culture is going to suck me in. And I have to admit…some years I’m sucked in unwillingly. I go begrudgingly, and I’m in it for the lights and hot chocolate more than the anticipation of the Christ child.
This year, our Advent theme at The Church at Highland Park is “Remembering Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love Through the Eyes of a Child”.
Children play a vital role in several stories in the Gospels. More than once, Jesus is reported reprimanding his disciples for keeping children away, requiring them to let the little children come to him (Mark 10 and Matthew 19) And as he taught, I can’t imagine they sat still or remained quiet as he spoke. They likely interrupted, fidgeted, and were a little distracted at times. They might have done as our children sometimes have during the Children’s Sermon: gotten up and left.
So often I find in churches that we act much like the disciples. We think the children are too loud, too energetic, too rambunctious, too much. They “disrespect” our worship space because they don’t walk to the altar steps for the children’s sermon, they run. They “misunderstand” the stories in the Bible that we try to teach them (though I might argue it’s more of a reimagining). They “distract” by bringing up irrelevant stories and random thoughts in the middle of their teacher’s sentences.
Over time, we learn to put ourselves in smaller boxes; we forget how to be childlike. We stop imagining, stop wondering (and wandering), stop expressing ourselves so freely. We “learn our place” and sit down. Sit still. Follow all the rules. Believe all the “right” stuff.
But what if we returned, for just a single Advent season, to our childhoods? If we remembered when we were a little feral and a lot creative, would we find something new in the Christmas story?
That’s my charge for you today: as you prepare for the season of Advent, remember what it was like for you as a child. Look to the children in your life for guidance. What do they hope for? When are they most at peace? What brings them joy? How do they show love? And how might the answers to these questions help you reimagine the Christmas story, of when Jesus himself came to Earth as a child?
So I extend to you a holy invitation this Advent: don’t walk, run. Don’t whisper, shout. Don’t fall into the same patterns, be imaginative. Wonder. Wander. Experience Advent as a child all over again, and discover hope, peace, joy, and love in the most child-ish ways.
