We believe it begins today.

(At least as best I can tell-I’ve been known to get these liturgical dates comically wrong.)

But let’s assume that it does.

Advent = “Breaking in.” Just what is it that is breaking in?

A person. A Kingdom.

Maybe. it’s like this: A Kingdom that is fully embodied in a person.

Interesting to think about.

Also interesting to think about that it’s a season of Advent, a season of breaking in.

As in, it’s not just a moment.

It’s a process.

Thinking this morning about how much that says about this God. If He is all powerful, why not just snap His fingers (Thanos, anyone?) and make it happen?

“Process” seems all to human. Why submit to a process, when you have all the power of the universe at your command?

Maybe it’s because “submitting” to an all-to-human concept (“process”, “time”, etc.) is exactly what it means to be “God.”

God submits, because God is god. To be “God” means to empty yourself, to serve. To surrender the trappings of power and to enter in.

This is not how I think, not how I instinctively exist in the world.

I desire to ascend (or at least, I want to).

I want to rise up and accumulate all the “things”—wisdom, knowledge, status, respect, money, authority…

The list goes on and on.

And I as I try to rise up on the escalator, God takes the service elevator down to the bottom, ending up in human skin, a fragile, vulnerable child.

Kneeling before all of us, and asking, “How can I help?”