Week 1: Day 3

Read Genesis 3

The story does not begin in a stable under the brightest star. Instead,

the story begins long before. In a quiet garden. A garden that was

perfect in community, made for a man and his wife and the One who

spun them into being.

If I am honest I wish that preparing my heart for Christmas to come

would not mean looking closer into this garden. It is the story none

of us long to tell…the story of how from the first bite of the juiciest

apple, everything changed.

To look into that garden in a true way means that we must look into

our own garden, full of our own apples. Our own choices and secrets.

Our own passivity and our own aggression. Our obsession with

ourselves. Our quest for perfection and pleasure. It means that we

must look at Adam and look at Eve, sure that if it was us in that

perfect garden, we would have done the exact same thing. Our hands

would have wrapped the fruit, our mouths watering at its promise of

knowledge and power and control.

To prepare our hearts for Christmas, we must be brave enough to stare into the darkness.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,

on them has light shone.

-Isaiah 9:2

We, who long for what is easy, what can be controlled, what will numb

and please--have spent our days walking and dwelling in the darkness.

And He, who longs to rescue and redeem and restore--has shone a great

Light.

The king is coming…

Prayer: 

O Lord, The house of my soul is narrow; enlarge it that you

may enter in. It is ruinous, O repair it! It displeases Your sight. I

confess it, I know. But who shall cleanse it, to whom shall I cry but to

you? Cleanse me from my secret faults, O Lord, and spare Your

servant from strange sins. Amen. (St. Augustine)