Preparations and Expectations

 

So far this week we have described and defined our experiences with hope, peace, love, and joy.  Yesterday, we paid particular attention to how our preparations might fan to flame these words of this season.  Perhaps you found yourself questioning some of the events in your calendar or remembering the way you would prepare twenty years ago that you want to try again.

Part of preparation is expectations.  You see, sometimes we do things not because we want to but out of obligation.  There is still a middle schooler living in each of us that succumbs to the peer pressure of the world today.  We want to be liked.  We don’t want to get voted off the island with friends, so sure we will go to that party and stand around eating little sausages drenched in BBQ sauce while talking about Florida State football.  Does that bring hope, peace, joy, or love?

To be clear, our expectations can guide the outcomes.  That is, if I dread going to the party, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy that I won’t have a good time.  But if I show up remembering there is nowhere God is not…even making small talk at a party whilst munching on meatballs, then of course hope is there. 

We need to name and notice our expectations.  What are you expecting this season?  How do you think hope should show up?  Does that mean politically or economically or relationally?  How do you long for peace?  Maybe you want wars to end and no more mass shootings.  Where would love to interrupt the status quo?  Seriously, imagine what that would mean.  Where might joy be a thread and theme of life?  What would that look like, taste like, sound and feel like? 

Too often our expectations are ambiguous, they lurk and live just beneath the surface of our consciousness, and poke/prink at us in the most inconvenient ways.  Bringing our expectations to light is one way that we might be honest this Advent about our heartfelt feelings toward hope, peace, joy, and love.

Note, the more clarity in both your expectations and preparations ~ how you are filling your days as we approach December can begin to shine lights on your reactions and responses to the language of Advent.  The more we can go into the basements of our souls, sort through the boxes of clutter and chaos that call that space, “home”, the more we can begin to clear space to live hope, peace, joy, and love in ways that our souls long for expression ~ even when David Muir doesn’t start the nightly news tonight by saying, “Breaking news from Sarasota, where a church is leading a revival of living hope, peace, joy, and love…we go live now to the homes of these people.”  Friends, that didn’t happen on the first Christmas, and may not happen this Christmas, but it can happen in our hearts even/especially here and now when we let hope, peace, love, and joy have the first, middle, and last word for how/when/where/why we are living our lives this day.  Amen.