Preparing a place in our main living room for a Christmas tree will be slightly more complicated this year due to my annual (but slightly belated) soap making chaos taking up half the room. The crafty clutter, though hard on the eyes, is easy on the nose ~ the scents of the essential oils beautifying the air. Soon the freshly minted bars will be mature enough for their relocation to obscure curing areas in the home, but for now they stand in opposition to any urgent decorating or tree importing schemes.
On a short furlough from high school seminary for a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma Billie's, Peter stayed up well past his normal bedtime to hand the outdoor lights with Joseph. Their decorative enthusiasm, dampened slightly by the parental regulation not to climb upon the high roof in the rain after dark, netted many strings of lights strung, powered and illuminated before the official end of Thanksgiving and Peter's return to school.
As important as the external preparations for Christmas seem, the internal preparations are much more urgent. Advent, offered for our eternal benefit as a season of penitence, or repentance, should be a time to clear the ground a bit, making the soil of our souls more fertile for the Lord's coming. Along those lines, I stumbled upon a tremendous series of sermons for Advent Recollection at the Audio Sancto Sermon Series. I highly recommend making time to listen to the three sermons on silence, prayer, and the spiritual life. Amidst your bustling to-do lists and business of the season, give yourself the gift of time to prayerfully fortify your soul for the coming of our Savior.
Jesus is coming! Will we be ready?
