Prepare the way

I was not ready for Advent this year.   My stuff wasn't out of the attic, I didn't have any candles, and the worst part--I was just not in the mood.  I wasn't in the mood for blasting the word REJOICE across the church every Sunday, not in the mood for Rite I, and I didn't have a clue what to get everybody for Christmas.  

Prepare the way of the Lord indeed.  

For some reason, Advent happened anyway.   The wreath went up in the church, the candles were purchased, I even procured a new "Advent Bush" that could withstand the ravages of my puppy by living on a table top.  Rite I happened in church, and we belted those rejoices again like we do every year.   Voices are missing and they are being missed, but Advent is happening anyway.  

Life is hard sometimes.  Preparing for Christmas, and by way of that preparing to usher in the Kingdom of God, isn't all chocolates behind numbered windows in an advent calender and haunting ancient hymns.  It's getting up every morning in December, whether you want to or not, and saying "even so, come Lord Jesus" again. 

Mary knew this.  (We haven't even gotten to her in the readings yet.  I think this coming Sunday we get to hear about John the Baptist.)   Mary had her life disrupted by an archangel who appeared ill advised on mechanics of human biology.    I have my days when I think she must have been a little bit psychic because she was faced with an angel of the Lord telling her she's going to bear a son, the Messiah even, and she has the big brass lady balls to tell him that she can't be pregnant because she's a virgin.   It's the holy version of staring down your doctor when they ask suspiciously when your last period was and telling them you have to be exposed to be in that condition.   So either they'd chatted before, or the Lady was totally and utterly caught off guard to the point of reacting to this news with exasperated unbelief.

I LOVE this about her, by the way.   Very young, vulnerable, about to be exposed to a series of life threatening social situations that probably shamed her to her very core despite none of it being what people thought, and she's making sure the archangel Gabriel understands how these things happen.

Life is hard sometimes.   Life is hard but God makes beauty from ashes. 

Even so, come...