Day one: Prepare

My little bit of Christmas cheer today was borrowed from my friend, Cynthia.

"A voice of one calling in the desert: 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'" (Isaiah40:3).

Advent is the season of preparing the way-- for Christ! It's funny, we often prepare for Easter by bringing ourselves closer to the Lord through an action, or by abstaining from something... but how do we prepare for Christmas? Like, "ready your heart"; what does that even mean?

I think about Mary during Advent a lot (as you probably have recognized I generally prefer to ruminate over the actions of Christ's female followers). At any rate, Mary, during Advent is pregnant-- super pregnant. She's all of 14, 15 or 16 years old, 8+ months pregnant, and riding a donkey on really awful roads... for days. (read: pregnancy nightmare).
Mary is not only preparing physically for the birth of our Lord by going back to Bethlehem, finding a safe place, trying to sustain her physical needs, but how else has she prepared?

Mary's risked it all. Jesus was conceived "outside of marriage." It's commonplace today, but this was grounds, not only to be completely ostracized socially-- both from family, friends, and the city in its entirety, but it furthermore risked her ability to have access to freshwater, food, a "doctor" (a scary thing not to have access to when you're agreeing to carry a baby), and her opportunity to marry-- ever (since Joseph could have denied her with no consequence, and even had her put to death).

It was bold. It was gutsy. It was her everything.

How are you preparing the way of the Lord? What is the Lord putting on your heart that is risky? The Lord DEPENDS, like the infant that the Lord was at Christmas, on us entirely-- not for the kingdom, not for repentence, not for anything except our hearts; only we can surrender those. So, I encourage you all: PREPARE YE THE WAY OF THE LORD!!