Pause in Advent II

There is a verse I came across when getting ready for my first Advent event in November. I used it briefly there and also at our own morning last week. It's from both Joel 2 and Acts 2, because Peter quotes it at Pentecost. I have always thought of "the last days" as the days just before the end of our times. In the material that I was reading, however, it talked of the last days as all time from now on, and I saw them as these last days of our old year in its last throes.

 “‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.

When I got upstairs last night for A Christmas Mystery, Jo was deep in colouring of the Nativity and Matthew was burrowed in deep for the journey! The night before Matt had asked me what my favourite part of Christmas was. I told him it was the lights. He asked what my second favourite part of Christmas was. I said it was Christmas night after everyone had gone home and we could be cosy and quiet just the four of us. Then he asked for my third. I told him then that what I really love at this time of the year is the waiting so hard that you catch the sense of something coming, something quiet but huge in the dark, cold skies. He just sort of sneaked in, didn't he, said Matt.

 I think that with young men, you don't have to do much to let them prophesy and envisage. The imagination is all there, the desire for the magic, the thirst for the story, the openess to Spirit. What I am finding harder is the old men dreaming dreams. Maybe they have lived a hard life; maybe they carry the scars of disappointments and fears. Maybe you don't know how to give them dreams to dream.

At the Advent events I looked at the verbs in the verse, which are not inappropriate for the season! We pour lots of delicious things; our children especially make lots of predictions as to what will appear on the day; we are surrounded by visions of sugar plums as we dream of a white Christmas. The point I wanted to make was that, in these last days when all our generations are gathering, the Spirit can pour out on us His activity in the midst of ours. That's really what I'm praying for, most especially because I know that dreams are a gift I can't write on my shopping list!