Make room – Make a way – Clear a path
Our homes are shrinking …yes, it is true. Research by LABC has found that the average size of a living room is 32% smaller than houses built in the 1970s, indeed our whole houses are shrinking and the UK’s newly built homes are the smallest by floor area in Europe! Don’t worry you’ve not stumbled into a rouge edition of ‘the AJ’ (Architect’s Journal), but where am I going with this?
Decluttering
Our houses, our diaries, our lives can feel as if they are shrinking and easily become cluttered, full to overflowing. It is a particular problem at Christmas. The joy of gift giving and receiving is tempered by the existential angst of overconsumption and the practical reality of where to put the new cookbook Auntie Jessie generously bought you for Christmas. The popularity of decluttering books and services – yes providing a decluttering service is now a paid profession – points to a problem many people feel we have as a society. Yet, we know it is not just our homes and our busy schedules that need decluttering, our hearts can also become cluttered. There is a need to “make room” in our lives, to “make a way”, a “clear path” for the king, and that leads us to the bible passages we will consider on Sunday.
Preparation & Calling
On Sunday we will look at Luke 1:5 – 7, 11 – 17 and John 1:6 – 9. These are stories of preparation and calling, of making room for the coming king. Zechariah and Elizabeth are an amazing couple, and we will spend some time thinking about what God might want to say to us in this season from their lives. We will also think about John, their son, and the call God placed upon his life to make ready the way of the Lord. All four gospels tell us that John was the one Isaiah had spoken of centuries early (see Isaiah 40:3). There is a real sense that the call on John’s life is the call on the life of every Christian, to be “a witness to the light” (John 1:8). I am encouraged by the stories I hear about the faithfulness of your witness, of creative ways you are finding to witness to the light, so here are our questions for this week:
(1) What does it mean – what does it look like – to witness to the light, to make ready the way of the Lord in 2020 and 2021?
(2) How can we encourage and stand with each other as witnesses to the light of Christ, as voices already crying out?
You can email your thoughts on this, put them in the comments in the live-chat on Sunday …we have so much to learn from each other, so it is good to share.
Looking forward to sharing with you on Sunday.
Brodie