It’s All His

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

John 1:3

There’s just the first touch of frost in the air. Around here, it sets in a little late. The old primordial chill stretches limbs up from the earth, and you can feel it clinging to your heels as you make the path along the river. The days are turning slow; the coffee cups are grasped more assuredly. We talk between us of how things will be this time next year, if there will be a child, a new project, a return. We make margin notes on the past along the waterfront, notes which are forgotten nearly as quickly as they are spoken.

Advent is a season of expectation, but it is also a season of remembrance-making. We mark out the story of Israel, vagabond children looking for a mother who comes to them as they did not expect and to do what they thought not to do. But it is for us to mark out our own stories as well. Our own vagabond child-hearts. Our own expectations that God should come like this or like that or do this or do that. Advent is an invitation to remembrance-making of our own history, caught up in the great history of the Savior.

For all our knowing of the sacred story, do we spend time thinking with the same kind of intention toward ourselves? The Gospels assure us that only by Jesus was everything that is brought into being, so even our own stories, our own histories, our own whatever-we-would-consider-it is part of the drama, quiet as it may be, of the Advent story. Advent is in us, truly, because the Jesus who lives inside us made us. Like it or not, past or present or future, it’s all his.

So take a moment, here, when the frost first sets in. Take a moment and be mindful of the story of Advent that is your story, too. Jesus came to you once, too. Jesus keeps coming again and again.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION: When you think about Advent, do you think about how you are part of the story, even all these years after the historical events? What does it look like for you to be mindful that all things were made and are made through Jesus?

PRAYER: Almighty God, grant that through the invitation of your Son, Jesus, we may see the world as made by and through and for him, that he is the first of all creation, and that he has been, is, and shall be glorified throughout all things, world without end, by the power of the Holy Spirit that testifies in us of his great glory. Amen.

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Advent in Us

“But whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his special favor on me—and not without results. For I have worked harder than any of the other apostles; yet it was not I but God who was working through me by his grace” (1 Cor. 15:10).

The grace of God through Christ Jesus is not a passive presence in our lives. The grace of God is at work in us, building us up and moving us to action and growth, to good work and worship. Everything we accomplish and all we become is because of the grace of Christ. In this, the first week of Advent, let’s remember Advent in Us, the gift of grace through our Lord Jesus. Let’s consider ways to discover anew the work of grace in our work, our lives, and our relationship with God.

Featured image by S. Etole. Used with Permission. Source via Flickr.