COUNTING DOWN

We're driving north on South College Mall Road. The girls are in the back seat as I drive us downtown to the church. (We decided the church looks like a castle.)

Ella asks, "When is Christmas?" I explain that Christmas will be Thursday. We count down the days, and I explain that it is three days away.

"Just three days and it will be Christmas morning?" Ella asks in a hushed voice. There is a sense of awe in her, I can tell, that we are this close to the big moment. Something big is about to happen.

I was struck by the contrast between her attitude and mine. I saw traffic backed up at the light, I was carrying around in my head a list of things to do, and the seven year old had this sense that we are right on the cusp of something big.

Time, for her, is actually moving towards something.

The Bible tells us that time is moving towards something big. Jeremiah says God is going to give us a new heart. Amos says God is going to rebuild the ruined cities. Zephaniah says God will be in the midst of the people, renewing them in God's love, exulting over them, saving the lame and the outcast. Matthew says the Child born in Bethlehem will save God's people from their sin. Which, I believe, means we are forgiven. More than that, though, it also means we receive a grace and a truth that allows us to grow up (Ephesians 4) and to become a new creation (2nd Corinthians 5).

Here is the truth of it: if you live long enough you can lose the sense of expectation that God may show up in a life-changing way. You can begin to view all time as "flat," with one day being just like the other. You can -if you're not careful- yawn your way through life and agree with the author of Ecclesiastes: "There is nothing new under the sun."

I listened to that voice from the backseat and I thought, "That's what it is like to count down the days. That's what it is like to lean into what is coming."

Are you leaning into God's future for you, ready to embrace the new thing God is up to in your life and in our world and in our church?

Lord, give me an expectant heart and an open mind. Teach me to see every day and every moment as time filled with the possibility of new life. Slow me down and open me up to your Spirit, I pray. Amen.

"And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." (Luke 2:7)

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark Fenstermacher