ADVENT 2022
What to Expect
Advent is a time of anticipation. During these next 30 days, we will all be busy preparing for Christmas Day. It's easy to get caught up in the modern-day hustle and bustle of Black Friday sales, decorations, and over-indulgence. This year, however, we are asking you to reflect on what was happening a few thousand years ago when Mary, Joseph, and Elizabeth were preparing for their upcoming Christmas Day. What signs were they given? How would they know when the Savior arrived? Simply put, they needed to LOOK, and so do we. This year we asked members of our Emmanuel parish to reflect upon this idea of paying attention and looking to the world around them in anticipation of Christmas Day. We have had so much fun reading these reflections and getting to know the people in our church family better, and we hope you enjoy reading them too.
Week 1: Look For
Pay closer attention; notice the presence of God.
Week 2: Look Up
Raise our eyes, mind, and heart to what is above and around us; go beyond the usual places and ways we perceive the world.
Week 3: Look Again
Take a second look at people and events; how do things look the same but also different from the perspective of time passing?
Week 4: Look After
Take the time to care for ourselves and others. How do we tend to our spiritual and physical lives?
Week 4: Look After
Take the time to care for ourselves and others. How do we tend to our spiritual and physical lives?
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”
When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
Matthew 1:18-25
December 23rd, Advent Day 27
Cal Newport, in his book, Digital Minimalism – Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, writes: “We added new technologies to the periphery of our experience for minor reasons, then woke one morning to discover that they had colonized the core of our daily life. We didn’t, in other words, sign up for the digital world in which we’re currently entrenched; we seem to have stumbled backward into it.”
