Mark 11:25 NLT

'But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.'

At the start of Advent, it’s a good idea to carry out an audit of your friendship with God. The key symbol throughout Advent is light. We light four candles to mark the weeks of Advent. We are looking to the breaking in of the light who is Jesus, who drives out the darkness of deception and death. And so an audit is to shine a light into the darkest recesses of our life (1 John 1:5-7).

Here in the Oratory, among my prayer materials I have stored an outline discipleship life audit that I use. The audit helps me to take stock of where I am. Perhaps the challenge in the waiting is that there are outstanding issues between God and me. A great place to start is to review my relational standing. Are there people I need to forgive? It’s not a question of if I think the issue is resolved, it’s my choice to resolve the outstanding issue. To simply let it go and lean upon the grace of God, from which I am a great beneficiary. This is the Christian way.

This process is useful. I look at my life in some detail to clear those things that obstruct my view of God. I ask a series of questions that touch upon revisiting my motives for what I do. Am I living for myself, for material gain, personal advancement or to realise my purpose in God?

We are never invited to remove ourselves from life, but always encouraged to continue to make our vital contribution. And this vital contribution is the heartbeat of who God has made each one of us. So the audit may reveal you don’t yet know what you are here on the planet for. Of course, many of us have simply never taken the time to discern our core identity; our strengths, our passion and our quest in life.

QUESTION: When was the last time you did an audit of your relationships with God and with others?

PRAYER: Lord, help me forgive as I have been forgiven, to love as I have been loved by you.

Micah 7:7 NLT

'As for me, I look to the Lord for help. I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me.'

Growing up, Mum equipped me for independence. She taught me to cook and how to navigate public transport. Living on the edge of London, this gave me access to a wide range of activities. I also had my bike and happily rode off for whole days in the countryside on my own. This independence gave me a lot of self-confidence. It also carried a shadow, as I became self-reliant, assuming I could always sort out my own problems. Many years on, I discovered that looking to God for help was not instinctive. I only called out when I’d run out of both ideas and resources. My cry was one of frustrated desperation rather than a warm invitation to work with God for a successful outcome.

My confidence was, and often still is, in my own ability. I have little experience of working with others for an outcome, and instinctively assume it’s my responsibility alone to resolve problems. I still clean, cook, garden, work etc. My time is full, and it’s taken some hard work to find the faith that God is indeed the one who listens and works with me for a practical outcome. I also find it difficult when God’s outcome doesn’t match with my own imagined one. I wrestle with God and want to persuade him to facilitate my life according to my own internal blueprint.

Looking to God for help is the result of practice. Over time I’ve learned to manage such behaviours and acknowledge the inner turmoil and turn my attention towards God.

QUESTION: Do you turn to the Lord for help at an early or late stage?

PRAYER: Lord, help me not to see you as simply an emergency service, but as a good presence in all my life.

Psalm 130:5-6 NLT

I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more than sentries long for the dawn…              

I recently returned home on the train with much work to do and a connection to make. As my train ground to a halt just outside my station, the guard announced that a train was stuck at the platform in front of us. I knew I had ten minutes to catch my connection, ten minutes used up stuck outside the station. I watched as my connection glided past our marooned train. In the past, this would have caused me to get very stressed, yet this time, after some initial annoyance, I settled to the reality that I now had an hour until my next connection.

Waiting is not something our humanity is wired to. We tend to keep ourselves busy; when there is some downtime, we flick on the TV to fill the vacuum. Advent is all about waiting in expectation for the arrival of Jesus. Unfortunately, Advent today is besieged by social gatherings, the need to shop for presents and food, and numerous seasonal events, all to be squeezed into already busy diaries. In the rush towards Christmas, time to pause for breath or thought are rare. The profound meaning of Christmas gets drowned out by the incessant Christmas tunes blasted in every shopping mall and the rising sense of panic that I won’t be ready on time.

Waiting is a theme throughout scripture. It helps us to recover perspective that we are not in a sprint but a marathon. It reminds us that our true purpose and identity is in Christ, and the busyness of life can so easily focus our attention on the many demands life hurls at us. So remind yourself that the journey of Advent is towards a stable, a place of worship and quiet consideration.

QUESTION: How can you make this Advent a meaningful approach to Christmas?

PRAYER: Lord, fill my heart with anticipation for the celebration of your Son’s birth.

Psalm 23:5 NLT

'You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honour me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings.'

After Thanksgiving, Advent begins and our tradition is to decorate the Oratory for Christmas over the weekend following Thanksgiving. We are mindful of the journey we enter in making our pilgrimage to the crib and Jesus’ birth through December.

Celebrations are wonderful, for they have a triple aspect. They obviously take place in the present moment. We interact with each other and with God, and engage with the present reality. Celebrations also look back at all God has done through history, and enable us to reflect on our own journey from faithlessness to faith. Looking back, we can see the battles that scarred us and the ways God encouraged and sustained us, even as we were blinded at that time. Finally, they look forward to the great banquet that awaits us all as we sit down with God in glorious celebration of the fulfilment of all things in him.

Our decorations are playful. We have a wonderful, carved Santa we picked up in Assisi, birthplace of St Francis. So, among the usual suspects gathered around the nativity scene, Santa takes his place. We also move the characters towards the crib through Advent. Mary and Joseph arrive after the animals are all set up. The shepherds make their way through the house to arrive Christmas Eve, and of course the Magi don’t make it until Epiphany. This was always something our daughter greatly enjoyed, slowly moving the characters towards the stable through the period of watching and waiting which is Advent. It gives a physical sense to the journey and time passing as we await the incarnation.

The whole Oratory will be filled with Christmas music, the sounds of laughter as we celebrate, dress the house and tell our familiar stories from past Christmases, and in doing so recover many of the insights and encouragements that these stories were the fruit of.

QUESTION: How might you use the story of Christmas to create a celebratory mood within your own home?

PRAYER: O God of all joy, we delight in you and your great salvation.

Luke 24:30-31 NLT

'As they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared!'

‘Celebrate’ means to observe or recognise. It’s why God invites us, the Church, to celebrate the Last Supper when we meet together (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). Redemption is the turning point of history, an invitation to all humanity. Every celebration has a narrative and a reason. Birthdays, anniversaries, significant moments, all become established patterns of behaviour.

So it is that having lost our liturgical compass, society sets about creating alternative celebrations. Our kids now have proms as a rite of passage; confirmation or equivalent, if celebrated at all, no longer enjoys any sense of significance. We create moments to gather from themed Eurovision Song Contest evenings for some, Strictly Come Dancing finals night events, grandparent days etc. It is perhaps the commercial potential that drives these; we, a compliant public, seek to raise some party spirit to give life a moment of excitement.

In the Oratory, each one of our celebrations offers an opportunity to recognise something of God’s grace in our lives. We already know the truth of such grace, but we celebrate to highlight what we know and to give thanks. So when my daughter reached the age of twelve-and-a-half, we organised a celebration of her moving into becoming a teenager. She invited friends and those adults she recognised as having played what she felt was an important role in her life. At a certain point, we gathered everyone together and invited those present to offer some words of encouragement and motivation to our daughter. Many, aware this was the plan, brought small gifts that were related to the words they spoke to her, gifts that she still holds dear. There was sufficient weight to the evening amid the fun and laughter. We also wanted to create our own rites of passage rather than subcontracting them to state and school.

QUESTION: What celebrations can you plan that will offer fresh insights and reminders of the love and grace of God?

PRAYER: Lord, let not the culture determine what and how I celebrate, but instead let your goodness determine my moments of celebration.