Vicar’s December letter

Dear friends,

Has anyone asked you if you are ready for Christmas yet? If not, they probably will soon. It’s one of those questions that people ask at this time of year. We perhaps ask the question ourselves. It’s the sort of question that’s often asked when someone isn’t quite sure what to say. It’s a kind of conversation gap filler. But what does the question really mean? Probably even the people who are asking the question don’t really know what they mean. It could be a question about shopping for gifts, it could be a question about buying in food for Christmas Day, Boxing Day or some other family get together, it could be a question about decorating the house for Christmas – inside or outside, it could be a question about getting cards written and posted. It’s probably generally meant to be a question that’s a little about all of these things.

But as we think about Advent and preparing for Christmas, what would we understand the question ‘Are you ready for Christmas?’ to mean? What should we understand the question to mean? Well, I think that in Advent we are supposed to be thinking about being ‘ready’ for two different things.

Firstly, we should be preparing ourselves for Christmas. I think that this means thinking about our relationship with God, thinking about our need for a Saviour, thinking about God’s love for us and his gift to us, thinking about who Jesus is and what he means to us. Maybe being ready for Christmas is about our recognition of our separation from God without Jesus and a willingness to accept him once again, to welcome him into our lives once again and to worship him once again.

Secondly, we should be thinking about, and preparing ourselves for, Christ’s Second Coming. Our word Advent is derived from the Latin word Adventus, which is a translation of the Greek word Parousia which refers to the Second Coming. So how can we prepare ourselves for Christ’s second coming? Well, part of this would probably be in the same way that we might prepare for Christmas – thinking about our relationship with God, thinking about our need for a Saviour, thinking about God’s love for us and his gift to us, thinking about who Jesus is and what he means to us; but also, I think it means trying to live lives that are worthy of disciples, followers of Christ. We will never really achieve this, but we should be thinking about what this means and we should be trying.

I hope that you are not overwhelmed by Christmas preparations. I hope that you have a good Advent. I hope that the next time someone says to you ‘Are you ready for Christmas?’ you think a bit about being ready to welcome Jesus, both in terms of this season and in terms of our relationship with him on into eternity.

God bless,