Behold Your God

Kerry Campbell ponders how to welcome Advent on different terms: following Mary's example of connecting with people and making space.

You can feel it in the air: it is that time of the year again. To be honest, the last several years have not found me very excited for Christmas. I would describe that feeling as more overwhelm, and maybe that was about the task list that mostly falls to mothers this time of year, or about the clutter that overtakes my small home, or maybe it’s about the start of the cold, dark and snowy winter season that I have never particularly loved. I’ve always been kind of a spring girl, myself.

But this year feels different somehow. This year I’m welcoming Advent on new terms.

As Mary modeled for us, I believe Advent is about saying yes and it’s about making space. At the Annunciation, an angel came to Mary with a wild plan, asking that she, a fifteen-year-old-or-so girl, would bear the Son of God for all of humanity. Saying yes to the angel’s proposal would crater Mary’s own plans and uproot her whole life—she had no real idea of the suffering that would visit her with her yes, but Mary did say yes to God and so can we. Being intentional about our yes to relationship with God and to what He longs to bring forth in us—well, that would be the very best way for us to use this season, so how can we do that?

Like Mary, we can connect with people, and we can make space. I love the account in the Gospel of Luke, where it says that Mary hurried to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, to share the news of the great thing that God had done. The pure joy in the encounter between these two women spills out of the page as you read it, but the short version is that Elizabeth calls Mary “blessed” for believing that the Lord would fulfill His promises, and Mary’s words in return, which are now called her Magnificat, shimmer with the reality that her soul really is glorifying the Lord—magnifying Him in a broken world. Gosh, I love that, don’t you?

Have you ever felt that feeling of magnifying God, of making Him known and seen to people? Maybe you’ve felt Him present within your soul in prayer in a way you couldn’t describe, or you found yourself saying or doing just the right thing for a friend in need, knowing that those words, action, or inspiration came from God and not from you? It’s the best soul feeling in the world, like hitting a baseball in the sweet spot of a bat. I believe that’s what Heaven will feel like when we get there someday.

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Mary made space in her home, her calendar, her plans, and her own body for Jesus to grow and to be born to a waiting world, and we can do that, too, in practical ways. We can set aside time for more prayer and reflection. We can be purposeful about quiet, about service, and about connection, as Mary was. With everything we’ve endured and continue to endure during this upended time, let’s not have an ordinary Advent or Christmas season this year.

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With everything we’ve endured and continue to endure during this upended time, let’s not have an ordinary Advent or Christmas season this year. #catholicmom

Like Mary, we can contemplate what it really means to allow God to grow in us and to bring Him to others, and each of us is suited to do just that in our own unique ways, in this specific time, in our own circles of influence. After all, I can’t bring Jesus to your coworkers, but you can. I won’t have the same spark of inspiration or talent around how to serve God’s people that you will.

Actively making space to receive God, and then to share Him in ways that are designed especially for us—that’s what Advent is really all about: magnifying our good God and bringing light to a dark world. Let’s endeavor to use our time well.