To Make Ready

Every year of our married life I have filled the shallow pottery circle with water, and snips from the yard, magnolia, nandina and evergreen, fitted the candles in place. Sometimes joyfully and expectantly, sometimes in sorrow and uncertainty, through the dim sleeplessness of new parenthood and the glad noise of small ones. And we have drawn around this circle.

Likewise my heart has been in different states by this Advent wreath. Absent and distracted or worried. Longing beyond the lighting and reading to bedtime for little ones and a few moments of peace before I am sleeping too. But, somehow, always making this circle of light part of our Christmas preparation.

This year, as the cut stems drink and the wicks stand ready, I, too, am longing. To drink more fully of Advent, to experience a season of preparation for Jesus. A slow dawning in my heart, again, of what it means that God poured His divine self into a human vessel, a man who laughed and wept and taught, who made friends and loved and was betrayed. But Who, Himself, was faithful to the cross, To the tomb. And now, to the Throne. Breath held, candle lit, as an old story is told and retold in our own four-flame circle, I want to see the wonder in our faces, to be made ready to come and adore Him.