"Proclaim Hope"

So,

Some of you may have heard that I am having a knee replacement done in January. The left knee has no cartilage and the bones are rubbing on each other when I do things.

Before I saw the orthopedist about a year ago, I was not only walking funny, but I was also having trouble sleeping. But having my man card, I was going to put off doing anything about it until I was lying face down in a puddle in too much in paint to get up.

But my family intervened (Sue said something about leaving me in the puddle) and I went and got a shot in the knee.

The shots work! 

But they don’t solve the problem. They mask the injury, and the knee stays the same or much more likely it just gets more painful.

So, the surgery is almost here, January 11th, and the anticipation is killing me! The anxiety. The details. The preoperative tests, doctor’s visits, scheduling stuff like PT. Dealing with insurance.

Am I ready, of course not! 

I know when it is, but this waiting is crazy!

And Christmas is almost here too. Are you ready? 

For most of us, we’re as ready as we are going to be.

The tree is up, maybe. Some presents are bought and not wrapped and some are wrapped, but I’m not sure about those tags with the names on them.

Always love on Christmas morning when someone says, “Oops, that’s for your sister”!

The Christmas cookies are in progress. And Christmas crack is in production at the Farley houses! I think it’s proper name is “English Toffee” but consider the way people eat it and hoard it, Christmas Crack seems appropriate.

But still, are we really ready?

The season of Advent as I mentioned last week can seem to be a weird time, because it doesn’t carefully follow the pattern of our Christmas preparations. 

We want to focus on the baby, the manger, Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem, and Christmas the way we’ve come to understand it.

But the church this time of year forces our gaze to another place, a place beyond the angel chorus and the visit of the Magi, to the work of the adult Jesus.

Why?

Because to understand the significance of Christmas, we have to understand who Jesus was and is. 

If we are lost in the details and anxiety of preparation for our very commercialized Christmas, we may miss the point of it all!

It’s not about the stocking hung carefully by the tree!

Instead, it is about God entering our world in a very amazing way! And the appropriate response is not craziness, but peace!!

Not running around trying to get those last-minute gifts, but rather awe, wonder, and life changing joy.

Kind of like what those shepherds felt after seeing and hearing the angel choruses. And Mary and Joseph felt as the shepherds wandered away.

The anxiety we can cast away, just like my building feeling of “oh my goodness, what was I thinking when I said yes to the knee”, and we can instead fall on our knees, those of us with good ones, at the side of the manger and worship.

God incarnate, the eternal, omnipotent, overwhelming presence of God, now present in the small package of a little baby boy.

Immanuel, God with us.

The one who heals our rift with the creator of the universe, offering us the opportunity to come and follow him, learn from him, emulate him, live like him, and experience what it is like to be a child of the Most High God.

Christmas is about the Christ.

Let’s you and I make it exactly that! For the King is come. Amen.