Advent wisdom: The person who dies with the most toys wins, but still dies.
Santa is busy at his workshop finishing the toys he’s going to deliver to children. Businesses are buying ad time on TV so they can lure us adults into buying adult toys. Have you put a red bow on the new car you’re giving your wife? Yeah, right. The run up to Christmas is about getting and filling space with stuff. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday…not bad, but it’s all about filling our space with stuff. Churches too. Let’s decorate this sacred space with religious stuff!
Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel observed, “We know what to do with space but do not know what to do about time, except to make it subservient to space. Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space. As a result, we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face. Time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives. Shrinking, therefore, from facing time, we escape for shelter to things of space” (“The Sabbath,” 5).
Advent is about time, not about space and stuff. Think about this: God made time holy before He pronounced any space or thing holy (Genesis 2:3). “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Soon bears us all away; We fly forgotten as a dream Dies at the op’ning day” (Lutheran Service Book, 733:5). That scares most people, but we can have comfort and hope knowing that true Advent is about time.
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