This morning, I grabbed my copy of The Message, a biblical paraphrase written by Eugene Peterson. I was skimming through the book of Romans and came upon these verses:
“So, here’s what I want you to do … Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, and walking-around life – and place it before God. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. (Romans 12:1-2; The Message).
Advent offers us the opportunity to slow down, even when everything around us seems to speed up. We light candles, mark weeks, and rehearse familiar stories, because we’re supposed to be learning again how to wait. And in that waiting, the apostle Paul offers us an unexpected invitation: be changed.
Paul points us to the ordinary rhythms of life: our bodies, our choices, and our ways of thinking. “Fix your attention on God,” he writes, not as a one-time gesture, but as a daily act of worship. Advent, then, looks less like escape from daily life and more like faithful presence within it.
“Don’t become too well-adjusted to your culture,” Paul continues. That feels especially challenging at Christmas. With less than a week before the “big day”, the expectations come at us hard: how we should celebrate, what we should buy, how cheerful we ought to feel. It’s hard, impossible really, to avoid all of that. That’s why we need Advent. We need the pause and the reminder that there are more important things.
As we wait for the Christ who comes to us again, Advent invites us not just to remember but to step away. To embrace what God has done for us. To offer ourselves anew. Our waiting becomes worship. Our openness becomes prayer. And God prepares us for a different kind of joy, a joy we can only find in him.
Prayer: God, in this season of busyness and chaos, help me remember to wait. Free me from the patterns that no longer give life and that threaten to steal my joy. Renew my mind with hope, patience, and trust. Take my ordinary days and make them holy. Amen.
