At Home In Advent

The following words for reflection are taken and adapted from “At Home In Advent - A domestic journey from Advent to Epiphany” from Gordon Giles (BRF - Bible Reading Fellowship). The entire book is available from Eden.co.uk and would be recommended to get a fuller experience of this time of devotion and meditation.

The purpose of these devotional is to give you something of an everyday object or motion which can focus our thinking through Advent. There are 3 sections:

Travelling in Advent
At Home in Advent
The run up to Christmas

This is a journey…

Highway: Setting off

Read: Isaiah 40:3 - 8

Consider the direction you are currently travelling, in a spiritual sense…. Is this the way you want to go, what about your speed? As much as many people never want to do… it is OK to ask for directions. Consider Lisburn … the roads in and out … the motorway off and on slips … it can be confusing. So where do we start? In Advent we start HERE.

Advent is not about racing towards Christmas Day. It’s not about tree decorations and present wrapping.

Nor is it about a baby in a manger… he has already come. Advent is about remembering that He will come again. We refer to the end times as the eschaton, it’s study as eschatology; not escapology! Yet so many people from outside and inside the Church want an escape not an eschaton

No matter how we feel today each of us can start a new journey towards the Risen Saviour awaiting His return.

Is Advent an escape from Christmas preparation or an enhancement of it?

What direction would you like to travel in?

Next time you travel on a road, reflect on how fast you will travel through Advent.

Pray for a holy Advent.