Advent Uncut

A few weeks back our pastor sent me an email asking me if our family would like to do the Advent for our church services that week.  Doing Advent entails going up to the pulpit with your entire family and taking turns reading different parts of the Advent reading to the congregation.  Then one person from your family lights the Advent candle.  When I received this email, I immediately replied back 'Sure!' and copied Eric on it so he was in the loop.  And then, guess what?  Out of sight, out of mind.  We never, ever, ever thought about it again.  Until Sunday morning. When I walked into the sanctuary with five minutes to spare and one of the pastors approached me with a candle in his hand and started talking.  I stared at him, blankly.  The words coming out of his mouth sounded like Chinese.  But then I saw the candlelabra in the background and the words he was forming began to become clearer.  And clearer.  And clearer.  Then a horrific realization came over me with dread and trembling.

I had forgotten that our family was doing Advent that morning!  

Trying to act calm and collected so he wouldn't catch on, I asked, 'um, well, I forgot my sheet with our readings on it.  Do you know how I can get a copy of it?'

Now it was his turn to stare at me blankly and say, deadpanned, 'Well, I don't know.  I mean, aren't you supposed to have your parts memorized?'  (He's kind of known for his dry-witted humor.  I still don't really know if he was kidding or not...)

I continued trembling, cheerfully smiled, and said something back that I can't recall now.  I turned on my heal and my brain quickly tried to come up with a plan while inside my head I said, 'please help me, Jesus!' 

Just then our head Pastor was walking into the sanctuary.  I explained that I had forgotten our Advent reading sheet.  Did he know where we could get one?  As if on cue, he pulled a sheet out of his binder and said, 'Sure!  I've got a copy right here!'

And the hallelujah chorus sang out loud and clear.  Well, in my head it did.

Next, I had to find my family.  I had three minutes.  You see, Eric and I had driven separately that morning and I had gotten there first.  As I went walk-running down the hallway, I spotted them approaching me.  

I yelled, "We have Advent today!"

I saw that same look of horrific realization come across his face too.

And then it was game on.  

I scanned the sheet, taking in that there were four reading parts.  Then I quickly became Miss Bossy-Pants and began assigning the reading parts based on the best 'go-to under emergency procedures'.

'Okay, I'll take the longest reading part.  Eric, you're good under pressure with things like candles, so you light the candle and read the second longest part.  Owen and Jeremiah, you're too young to read on the fly without practice, so you're out.  Sophie, (teenage girl who doesn't want everyone staring at her and quickly exclaimed, 'I'm not reading!!!').  Okay, never mind.  Josh, you be Reader 1 since you're the oldest child.  Wes, Reader 4 only has two sentences.  I think you can handle it.'

As we sat down in our pew, I gave them the sheet to look over for words they might now know.  And I tried to breathe.  

I become common senseless in on-the-fly settings.  My mind was all jumbled and I only remembered that we were supposed to walk up to the altar after Pastor Russ gave the announcements.  So when he stopped talking, I stood up.  Eric jerked me down and hissed, 'not yet!  AFTER the video!'   Oops.  Okay.  Hopefully nobody noticed that.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  As the video played, I looked over the sheet one last time, realizing Wes' part had the word 'iniquity'.  Oh dear, does he know how to pronounce that?  I tried to mouth this to him, as he set on the other end of the pew, but just kept mouthing back, 'what?'

Oh, Jesus, help him to know that word.  

Breathe in.  Breathe out.

Finally, it was time.  Owen, thinking he wasn't supposed to walk up with us since he didn't have a speaking part, almost didn't go.  He grabbed ahold of the pew and planted his feet and I almost panicked.  But it was a Christmas miracle.  I told him to come on and he actually listened.

So there we stood.  It wasn't as I would have planned it.  In my perfect world we would have practiced our reading parts and even given one of our youngest a part to read because, well, that is just so cute.  I would have checked out everyone's clothing that morning, making sure it passed inspection.  I might have even had everyone lay out their clothes the night before.  As it was, we were unprepared and off the cuff, many of us sporting jeans and tennis shoes.  

Yet, you know what?  It ended up being completely fine.  Just fine.

And so now is the part when I find the spiritual lesson to be learned because there is always a spiritual lesson, right.  I suppose it could be spun one of two ways.  For one, maybe the lesson is that if we hadn't been so busy that week we wouldn't have forgotten about our Advent reading.  

While this is true, it's an incomplete picture.  You know what is missing?  Grace.  And guess what? Grace is greater .

Grace is greater than the fact that we forgot.  Grace takes what we have to offer and makes it enough.  He wants us to come as we are.  To come anyway, even if it's not well thought out.  To come and offer what we can because there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus.  We can try to dress up and perform and put on our Sunday best for Jesus, but he always prefers the uncut version.  The version that is raw and true.