In Advent

It's the first of December. Days whirl by for us lately, what with our normal daily routine of work for Brent and chores and routine for E and I, and then packing as much work on the house as we can into our evenings. Our big wish (one might even say Christmas wish?) is to be living upstairs by Christmas...but I have great doubts this will actually happen.

Especially since, as we were furiously assembling kitchen cabinets last night, we ripped open a box to discover it was the WRONG product...that the IKEA kitchen lady had ordered us one cabinet in birch rather than white, necessitating a flustered trip to IKEA this morning for E&me. The good news? A spontaneous lunch visit with S&R is in the works, and we haven't seen them since...June, I think.

Anyway, the point is, Advent is supposed to be a quiet contemplative time to consider Christ's first coming and the promise of His second coming. I like the idea of Advent being countercultural. That amidst the materialism and busyness that our society counts as part of Christmas preparation, we are offered an opportunity to stop in our tracks and consider, for four weeks, the character of our Saviour and the sacrifice He made in coming to this earth.

Yet, though I say I value this chance to move in slow motion against the current, that's not what is actually happening in our lives. We're furiously trying to get done the house and so we organize our days around this, to the detriment of our relationships and possibly our sanity.

So one goal of mine for the next month is to carve out time each day to contemplate, to love and to pause. We'll see how that goes, since at the same time, I really, really want to actually move into our house...