In a cartoon strip, one character complains to another about how confusing life is and how we are thrown into it without really being prepared. The other character responds: “What did you want? A chance to warm up first?”
The season of Advent is our chance to warm up our hearts and souls that we might anticipate and prepare for the birth of the Christ child yet one more time. This is the time of Emmanuel, God with us. Not God for us or even to us; but the God who walks with us, side by side.
Maybe the best way to prepare our hearts to be a dwelling place for the Christ Child is to practice being with one another. To join in the dance of giving and receiving. Maybe Christmas isn’t so much about what we can do for someone else but what we can do with someone else.
This message is excerpted from “Unshopping for Christmas” by Violet Cucciniello Little in the December 2018 Gather magazine.
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