Pause in Advent

 Ang at Tracing Rainbows is hosting this year's Pause in Advent. I thought that this time round I'd share some of the things we talked about at our Preparing for Advent event that happened yesterday. My very wondrous friends, Catherine and Niqi, and I have satisfied our own longings for Advent through this little morning jolly for six years now, and very graciously other women come along to keep us company!

 First of all we thought about the picture that is our personal Christmas. Many of the component parts are the same in every house, but we all have those little individual traditions and essentials without which Christmas just wouldn't be the same. We thought about those component parts as pieces in the jigsaw that is our picture of Christmas.

As we shared what we had written, the jigsaws were stuck onto the black screen that you might just see behind the little me whom you might just see top right! On the screen was a net of lights, and as the jigsaws were stuck on, the lights were blocked out. We read John 1:9, and considered how, in the four week busyness of getting ready for one day, we could miss the true light that gives light to everyone and that was coming into the world. We know that Jesus was more than happy with feasting and presents, but as the jigsaw pieces came back off we also knew that on the night of His birth He didn't have a new pair of Christmas pyjamas, a spotlessly clean house, nor a Country Living magazine style Christmas tree. As the jigsaws came down the lights were once again revealed...

 At the end of the morning, after much cookery and craft, we reflected on what we could write on a smaller jigsaw. Four pieces that we could add to our existing jigsaw, in expectation that, with these pieces in place, the rest of the picture could. be filled with the true light that is coming into the world.

 These are last year's lights again! What struck me as I put this together for a new farcebook profile picture was how the strings of lights looked a bit like pictures you might see of the crown of thorns. I think that Christmas is fun. I love the lighting of lights in the darkness, in the most spiritual sense, but also in that primeval need to mark the fulcrum of the old year turning back again. I agree with Dickens in Christmas Carol- if we believe in Christmas we carry it in our hearts every day. We carry birth, with death, with resurrection all tied into one. In Advent we journey towards Bethlehem bathed in that light.