Fleshing It Out

I grew up in a home that emphasized Advent and Christmas.  My favorite time has always been Advent because of its combination of anticipation and ambivalence.  This is what I fell in my own spiritual life; a sense of expectation by a feeling that I am not sure what it will mean if the expectation is fulfilled.

You know, faith is really only our best guess at the nature of our relationship with God.  Our human hearts engage in the guessing because it is of the greatest importance, yet it is a given of our relationship with God that we will will not fully understand it.

Incarnation!

It's what God did at Christmas, roughly two millennia ago.  God came to earth in caro (Latin for "in flesh").  You might say that God appeared to us in Jesus in order to "flesh out" God's grace, God's love and God's plan for humankind.

Fleshing it out.

That's what God did in Jesus, and that is what we need to do during Advent.

We wait and prepare for God's coming, once again.  We try to flesh it out!

It is often in the profound events of life - birth, death, sorrow, the finding of wisdom, the finding of daily bread - that God comes to us.

I can recognize it when it happens for me; I can't say what it would look, sound or be like for you.

To accept the reality that God will find God's way to us is to be living in Advent:

Waiting

Preparing

Expectant

Unsure

Willing to guess

Once again We flesh out God's coming to us!