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We’re really into the heart of Advent now, and I hope that you’ve been able to spend time with some of the beautiful readings of the season, among the most beautiful in the whole church year. Most of them talk about the coming of the Messiah. The Book of Isaiah offers us some amazing imagery of the earth itself renewing, growing, changing, flourishing, as a sign of God’s ability to bring something out of nothing. And in the Gospels we’ve heard about John the Baptist’s proclamation of Jesus’s coming into the history of the Jewish people. 

But that raises an important question: How does Jesus come into your life? Of course, probably everyone, or mostly everyone, listening to this podcast has already accepted Jesus into their lives and tries to live according to Jesus’s way. But what does it mean to prepare for Jesus’s entry into your life in a new way during Advent? How can you best “prepare the way”? What would that mean for you? Is it in fact praying more, or maybe being kinder to people, more generous to the poor, less judgmental, less negative, less complaining? What would that mean? And at Christmas, how can Jesus be born into your life in a new way? You know, in those readings from Isaiah, God is turning even the desert into a blooming oasis. So there is nothing in your life so dead that God cannot bring it back to life. As you enter more deeply into Advent, prepare yourself for the new entrance of Jesus into your heart and your life. And prepare to bring Jesus into the lives of others as well. Happy Advent.