The season of Advent calls us to stand back and reflect on what is happening.
It forces us to confront what God is actually like. It challenges many mistaken ideas that people have of God.
Overall, the entire focus on the coming of God among us, that is, God in the flesh, is a God who comes so ordinary. God comes and works among the poor; not the powerful and well educated of our society.
The big danger with the Christmas story is that we are so familiar with it we so often ,we miss the point of the Christmas story.
The first meaning of the story is how much our God wants to be with us. The entire story of the conception and birth of Jesus is that God wants to literally ‘ come and make his home with us.’ Bethlehem must not be some sweet historical place where the birth occurred. Each one of us, each Christian family, must now become the Bethlehem. Each family must be the location where Christ is born and takes root among humanity. Your family, your life must be the location for the birth of Christ.
We must discard any sweet, sentimental notion we have of Mary. In reality, she stands as one of the little ones of this world. She was a woman (without power), she was young and illiterate. Now God came to this powerless one and asked her to do the impossible. She was asked to become mother. And from her faith and from her body, she brought forth the very Son of God.
God comes among the ordinary, the poor and the marginalized of this world. God does not use the powerful, the well-healed and the talented to accomplish his work. He uses the very ordinary people.
Now, this Advent, get in touch with the poverty of God. No blasting fanfare. No powerful overkill by the rich of this world. No, just ordinary people, chosen and called by God.
Apply the Christmas story to your own life. Not many of you are rich, dominant and powerful. You are ordinary.
But pay attention to how God is using you. As he brought Mary into the great plan of salvation, so now you are being called to bring forth the goodness, the love and the mercy of God through your care and nourishment of the poor and the forgotten.
The man and woman who make sandwiches every day to sustain the homeless are using their very ordinary skills to share the love and the compassion of God. It is in their hands that the love of is made real.
During these four weeks of Advent, examine in your own life where God is using you to bring forth the very love and compassion of God.
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