Advent to Christmas
by Lisa Treacy | @lisasmtreacy
Editorial Note: We conclude our Advent series, Incarnation, today with this reflection to carry you through the season of Christmastide. Thank you to all the contributors who made this Advent such a rich time of anticipation, as we opened the gift of your words and images, your hopes, sorrows, and joys each day. You have helped us as a community journey from the possibility of Advent into the fullness of Christmastide. We hope you’ll join us for a new season of Vita Poetica in 2021. Blessings to you all!
Listen to Lisa read her reflection:
Christmas—no longer waiting, fulfillment is here. Emmanuel. God come to earth as flesh to fully embrace our weakness. Christ's birth ushers in redemption and restoration, yet we live continually looking to be redeemed and restored. Advent and Christmas happening together every day of the year.
We're all waiting for something—that life-changing opportunity at work; the relationship that will make us whole; for the angst to stop and the joy to move in. Holding on in expectation that tomorrow will be better than today—that our failures, demons, sadness and dislocations will be redeemed, removed, replaced and restored. Hoping that the time will come when we move from Advent to Christmas.
2020 has not been an easy year. A global pandemic has ravaged families; social revolutions have wailed for justice; continued and newly started wars; economic devastation in the wake of affluent extravagance; this year ends with so many without safety, shelter, health, food, belonging, love. In the 'rich' West more people will be availing of charitable donations of food & clothing than before and homeless shelters bulge at the seams.
I have family and friends & the means to buy presents. I've a home, clothes on my back and more than ample food on the table. I am blessed to feel love, acceptance and belonging because I'm me not because of what I do, what I've achieved, how much money I have, who I know. What else could I want?
I wonder what would happen this Christmas if the ones who have much were to give gladly to those who have little—no strings or conditions attached? What would that do to the economics of safety, shelter, health, food, belonging, and love? What if we were to play a part in helping someone else move from Advent to Christmas; from waiting to new life, hope and purpose?
Christmas—the great gift has come, Emmanuel, God incarnate. Christ sets himself aside and becomes a man. He holds nothing back. Those of us who seek to follow Jesus are called to do the same. We must set ourselves aside, enter into the life of the other, and hold nothing back.
