Great expectations

I finished my shopping today. Our tree isn’t decorated yet. A pile of hastily-wrapped gifts are stowed safely beneath my bed. And He is coming.

I’ve been wasting time. I’ve been lazy. I’ve let good habits slide. And He is coming.

My heart is open. There is room. I need a savior. And He is coming.

This Advent, I have been especially reminded of my poverty. It’s a blessed gift, to be sure, but my instinct is always to recoil. To long for security, assuredness, control. But in these days of dark and hopeful waiting, He’s been drawing me out of those unsatisfying human constructs and into His warm, tender, loving arms. It’s not a constant peace I’ve felt, not in the midst of the great unknown and the reality of risk and a new relinquishing of control, but rather a mysterious knowing. Knowing by faith and hope and maybe a touch of sheer desperation that, well, He is Who He says He is.

Son of the Most High.

A mighty Savior, born of the house of his servant David.

Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.

He Who came to us in secret, in the piercing cold, shrouded in darkness. He Who deserved the finest reception and worship of the whole world, and Who instead came forth in abject poverty. He Who, with a cry, entered a world that had been aching for Him from the very beginning. A world that longed for Him, but wasn’t ready for Him. A world marked by sin and division, by danger and strife, by darkness.

I long for Him, but I’m not ready for Him. My heart is marked by self-sufficiency and doubt. But He comes because He loves to save. He entered this world in total poverty, and He comes again to me in mine. In my laziness and bad habits and distraction, still, I ache for Him. And He comes.

Are you unprepared? Distracted, anxious, filled to the brim? He comes to you as you are. It takes nothing but a moment, nothing but a humble and contrite heart, nothing but a prayer from the depths, to welcome Him.

He is coming.