“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
“Fan into flame the gift of God which is within you” – 2 Timothy 1:6
Christmas is of course a time when we look back to this momentous moment in history when God enter our world as one of us. One of our Advent themes is ‘waiting’, but how do we think about this when the thing we are waiting for we know has already happened? Even when we talk about waiting for Jesus to be born in our hearts, for most of us we know he already has a place there. It is perhaps helpful to think of a farmer planting his crop and waiting for it to grow, or a parent waiting and watching as they see their child grow and mature. In Advent and Christmas we are waiting for something that has already been sown in us, in our world, but which we can nurture and grow. The writer Henri Nouwen describes this spiritual idea of waiting like this: “We can really only wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more.”
Let us reflect on the message of this short reading today, throughout this Advent and Christmas season, and use it as a time to fan into flame the spark of divine love and goodness that God has already planted in us.
Creator God, help us to make time and space this Advent to tend to the gift of your own self which you have planted in our hearts. May this season be a time for us to grow in faith, hope and love.
Amen.