The season of Advent is not so much about our own preparing and waiting to see what God is going to do, but rather about God waiting to see how we are going to respond to what God has already done. Is our faith challenged because our Scriptures tell us that Mary, a virgin, gave birth? Or do we excitedly—like a child, even—ask "what could this mean for us?" Running toward the story of God's coming to earth as a babe, not away from it, helps us conclude rightly that if God did the impossible in Mary and Joseph's lives, God can help us live through the impossible events of our lives, too. Read Scripture from that perspective and we discover the whole Bible is the Christmas story told over and over again. That's good for those of us who have faced many a time when we thought we just could not make it another day.
