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The UMConnection is pleased to share with you two selections from the 2013 Young Adult Advent Devotional. A new devotional will be featured on our web site, www.bwcumc.org, every day during Advent. We encourage you to use these words as a way to “prepare ye the way of the Lord” in the coming days and weeks.

Walking through the store, it’s as if I am in a daze. Christmas music is being pumped through the speakers, while shoppers weave in and out of the racks, each of us engrossed in our shopping list. I have just a few more people to cross off my list; just a few more random gifts to put in a box with a bow; just a few more things to “finish” Christmas.

My three-year-old holds my hand. Why Eden won’t go in the cart, I am not sure. But pushing the cart with one hand and gripping her with the other isn’t leaving me much space to get Christmas done. I let go for one second – to cross a name off the list – and she is gone.

Keep watch.

Now I am frantic. The crowd is building, people are frenetic, and I am unable to breathe. Where is my child? Where is my Eden?

Keep watch.

There – in the aisle – I spy a blond bob. Standing
mesmerized by something, she is engrossed, but in what? Leaving the cart, I rushed to my child. What is she staring at? What has captured her attention?

A small nativity.  Simple.  Just Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child, nestled in a bed of straw.  Simple and yet beautiful.

Big blue eyes look up at me with a full smile. She points and simply says, “Look mom, it is Jesus.”

Yes, my child. I see him now. Despite the chaos of Christmas, I see. Despite the list of Christmas I had before, I see. Despite the growing crowd, pushing, pressing, I see.

Keep watch.

So overwhelmed by the stuff of Christmas – the lights, the gifts, the chaos – have we forgotten to watch for the signs and wonders of the Kingdom of God around us?

So distracted by all that has to be done, have we forgotten to watch for signs of what God is doing among us, with us, in us?

Keep watch, my friends. Keep watch.

Wednesday, December 18 • Shannon Sullivan • Presbury UMC, Edgewood • Focus: Opening your eyes to hope • Isaiah 35:1-10

In the desert where we were, a tall blue flag shot up into the sky, anchored to the dusty earth by a blue jug.

Water.

Here, on the border, where so many are lost in the wilderness, whether the symbolic wildernesses of greed or grief or the actual desert, here, there was water breaking forth. This hospitality is what we had been waiting for, whether we knew it or not.

We were a group of young adults participating in an experiential education program focused on immigration. Earlier that day, we met with some high school students living on the border who, when we shared our names and what the border meant to us, overwhelmingly spoke of death.

That stuck out in my mind as we saw this flag that symbolized water, which was being offered by a migrant shelter in Altar, Mexico, a simple place with hot food and a warm place to sleep.

When we arrived, no one was there yet for the night, so we waited. We had no idea what we should expect, but one of us got out a guitar and began to sing. Slowly, people began to arrive, including a young family, a teenage boy and two brothers. They were exhausted and the language barrier made it difficult to strike up a conversation, but they joined us in song. Then we ate together, piecing together stories.

That night was filled with life and warmth, even though the realities of the dangers of the desert hung over us.

Reading Isaiah brought me back to that night at the migrant shelter. Isaiah’s litany is one of hope in the midst of death; the hope we have been waiting for in the midst of the death we have seen around us.

Preparing ourselves for Jesus’ arrival this Advent season is about opening our eyes to that hope at the same time it is about how we can nurture those blossoms God has planted in the wildernesses of this world. As that shelter on the border was, we can be waters breaking forth, offering life to people in their wilderness places.

PRAYER: Holy One, we reach out to you, seeking relief from the wildernesses around us. But we know we aren’t the only ones. Return us to your joy, and give us the courage to bring your realm to this place. Amen.