A Take on Advent

At text study last week we were talking about this whole theme of "being prepared" of "being ready" that runs throughout Advent. In light of the fact that part of what we're getting ready for is the birth of the baby Jesus (along with getting ready for the second coming, but we'll brush past that for now) I thought my pastor friend's thought was awesome. She said something to the effect of, "It's kind of like being pregnant. You don't know exactly when the baby is going to come. So you can take that and panic or you can take that as a great relief because it's not up to you."

We don't know when Jesus will return, but we know that Jesus promised us that. We can take that as a sign that we need to start to scurry around and make sure we do certain things? We also can make the choice to take this promise as a sign that it's not up to us, there is nothing we can do, that it is all up to God. To misquote Pastor Dave from his sermon yesterday, "Being ready is knowing WHO we are preparing for, WHO we are expecting."