Tis’ the season

This week we got crafty and attempted our own advent calendar. Each day gives an instruction for a random act of kindness or family activity. Such as take your teacher a coffee, family movie night, make someone dinner, all donate 3 items to the Salvation Army, make up dental packs for homeless etc. I like adding the giving, generous, thankful dimension into the Collins world of Christmas lists.

Today is write ‘someone an encouraging note’

Oh and in case you feel for my babes…. We also have these.

All the way from Wilkos. Downtown Stourbridge, UK.

As we open the door and step over the threshold of Advent will it be the stressful countdown of anticipation or the all consuming list writing and over spending or will it be something different?

Advent. Waiting.

Advent. Heartfelt love, tangible hope, a promise of peace, inexpressible joy.

Advent. Gives us the security of a Light that will shatter darkness, when we see the blinding light we are never the same.

Advent. Refuses the noose of abandonment.

Advent. Dissolves despair.

Advent. Desires to encompass our lives, our world, our story.

“Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope.…     It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.”

Memory Awakens Hope. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Seek That Which Is Above.

“Advent, like its cousin Lent, is a season for prayer and reformation of our hearts. Since it comes at winter time, fire is a fitting sign to help us celebrate Advent…If Christ is to come more fully into our lives this Christmas, if God is to become really incarnate for us, then fire will have to be present in our prayer. Our worship and devotion will have to stoke the kind of fire in our souls that can truly change our hearts. Ours is a great responsibility not to waste this advent time”

Fire of Advent. Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, p. 187

Not to waste. To focus. Focus comes from the word meaning ‘hearth’ or ‘fireplace’ in other words ‘the burning centre’ I can sit for hours gazing at our blazing fire – it takes energy to keep the fire burning.

We need to fix our gaze upon the One, to gaze on the blaze.

‘May this season be a time for bringing hope, transformation and fulfilment into the Advent of our lives’