Sunday, November 29, 2009

Advent, Day 1...

I spent yesterday doing work around the house. The yard was mowed, back porch cleaned up a bit, front bushes were clipped and the Christmas lights went up. When darkness was near, the last strand was put in place. It isn't much, but it is something. Plugging in the final product, I looked at my poor, eclectic and sometimes dangerous little street and I had this thought-- I'm glad the holidays in my neighborhood look more like A Charlie Brown Christmas than Christmas in Rockefeller Center. As I went into the house chuckling at the meagerness of my outdoor decorating ability one of the young kids from next door yelled out, "Hey Mister. It looks perfect!"

When you drive by here, you will quickly realize it is most definitely not perfect. It isn't really even that good.

I just arrived home from church. It is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which means we meet at night to give travelers time to get back to Waco from their visits home. It is also the first Sunday of Advent, which means we begin to think about hope and expectancy. About waiting. Waiting for something better. Waiting for something new and different and more invigorating than the lives we have found ourselves stuck in.

In the service there were babies crying, technical malfunctions, and, if you ask me, a slight hint of healthy melancholy mixed in with the joy we knew we should all be feeling at that moment. It was much more Charlie Brown than Rockefeller Center which, to me, looked just about perfect.

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