Prepare the way! Advent is here – four weeks of waiting and watching and listening…and doing all manner of things to get ready for Christmas.  Because Advent comes every year, we’ve probably memorized all of the Scripture readings, song lyrics, and steps to making a beautiful Advent wreath or food basket.  About now, we rummage through recipe boxes and websites to find the traditional recipes we make each year.

Yes, there is much familiar about this Season – and wonderfully so, when it comes to family and other traditions that we cherish and want to pass along to loved ones.

But, ideally, Advent is also a season of spiritual development, a time when we reach a deeper understanding of God’s presence in our lives and the import of the Gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. Yes, ideally, come December 25, we should be noticeably different from the people we were today, as Advent dawned.

Far from the “same old, same old,” Advent is, at its very core, a time to reach for newness, to add something significant to our spiritual selves, and to embark on an adventure of prayer, reflection, reaching out, and looking in that leads us to places of the spirit and of life that we never could have imagined without Our Lord’s guidance.

Where this Advent will lead each of us is for God to know and us, individually, to discover. But if we keep our focus on this Season of light, love, and preparation, we will be able to move through each day guided by His hand and inspired by His heart – a heart that knows us each by name and has bestowed upon each of us wonderful gifts just ready for the discovering.

Blessings for the day,

Maureen